University Steps
by Phoenix Satori
Summary: And, do me a favor? When you see me in the Quad, pretend you don't know me.' Derek and Casey at University. May god have mercy on us all. ::Dasey One-Shots::
1. distracting derek

On an unrelated note: this is (probably) going to be a series, mostly connected only by the fact that each piece is going to take place in college (and the Dasey college has a NAME now! because I just saw the last episode a few hours ago! and it was GLORIOUS. and hugely disappointing. but mostly GLORIOUS!), but otherwise they'll probably all be stand-alones. There will also (likely) be some sort of gradual, traceable 'progress' in the Derek-Casey relationship, but I make no promises that I won't just arbitrarily decide to throw them into the shower together. (Previous fic I have written involving these two inevitably seem to degenerate into the raw human-alleyway business, so I suppose I can't count out the possibility of that happening again...) The _plan_ is to go about developing them into a couple _incrementally_, via a series of vignettes in which they will argue lots and, over time, begin to realize that they (want to sex each other) belong together, but I promise to warn you ahead of time if they jump the gun and accidentally --and simultaneously-- misplace all of their clothing.

THAT being said.

In the first of the one-shots...I figured Derek would probably still require someone to keep his mind off of his nerves immediately preceding hockey games (see S2 ep, 'Freaked Out Friday'), and I suppose the idea I came up with (the one where Casey comes over the day before and argues with him to keep him occupied) to address that made some sort of sense when I started writing it. (Incidentally. I don't know what day college hockey games take place in Canada. I suppose I could find out, but I think I'd rather go with the Derek Procrastination Method and do that later. Or, you know, never.)

*ahem*

So. Don't own the show, can't explain the fic, have violent fear of Shasta Cola.

Read at your own peril.

* * *

_::in which it is Not A Routine::_

It's not like it's _routine_ or anything.

Even though, because it's Casey, she shows up (all-too-predictably) at the same time every Friday afternoon after her last class of the day, backpack (and _massive_, bag-lady sized 'purse' –he still insists on calling it the 'McDonald Landfill,' or just 'the Landfill' for short) filled to bursting with all manner of Casey Paraphernalia (CD's, _health food_, school books, 3x5s, a full contingent of writing utensils –and their back-ups—travel board games, a toothbrush, a change of clothes, etc).

Even though, because it's Derek, he doesn't realize that he always opens with,

"The hell you doing here, McDonald? Oh, you've come to let me know that our parents are splitting up and we never have to see each other again? Well, that's the best news I've heard all week --nay, all my _life_." Casey is never, ever impressed, having by now established an Automatic Response on the order of rolling her eyes and shouldering her way past him, depositing her luggage (not her 'things,' that is far too innocuous a term) on his coffee table (where it often ends up blocking the view of the television, and even though he _always_ shoves her stuff to the floor –and she _always_ yells at him for doing it—she _never_ seems to _learn_ not to keep putting the bulky obstructions _there_ –or, maybe she's trying to get _him_ to eventually give up and just leave it all there, and just being uselessly pig-headed) and then heading straight for the kitchen to throw together some nauseatingly nutritious concoction while he slams the door shut and dogs her heels all the way there, verbally accosting her all the while in the hopes she'll Get the Message and Leave. (This always turns out to be too much to hope for.)

Even though, because it's them, it never manages to take longer than one-half to three-fourths of the way through Casey's snack engineering before he finally gets a rise out of her and they start arguing about everything from hygiene and study habits to who has the better taste in music and the opposite sex.

Just because they have a familiar, somewhat-maybe-vaguely-_established_ 'script,' that doesn't mean it's 'routine.' It just means that it happens far more often than he would like, far more often than she realizes, and _definitely_ far more often than either of them can stand.

Not that any of that ever seems to stop it from happening.

* * *

"Sure, of course, come right in, make yourself at home." He says to her back as she shuffles into the living room, ignoring the sarcasm as she dumps her (many, very heavy-looking) burdens on the coffee table. "I love that we're 'avoiding each other at all times at university' _together_ now." He hears her rolling her eyes and lets the door fall shut while she starts unloading Tupperware (which, if their variously-colored lids are any indication, are probably color-coded --he is at once incredulous and unsurprised).

"Oh, please. You're allowed to hunt me down _everyday_ at lunch so you can shamelessly –and _lamely_—flirt with my friends –most of whom are currently in serious, _long_-term relationships which it would be _nice_ of you to try to _not _actively undermine, by the way—but I'm not allowed to stop by every once in a while –where no one can see us so that we can both deny that this unspeakable thing is happening at all—and check up on you for your father? I have instructions to come over at least once a week and poke you with a stick to make sure you're still alive." Derek doesn't know what part of the speech to address first: he would like to know how she manages to cover such a broad range of topics in such a short amount of time without losing track of where she's going, definitely, but there's also the question of how she can say so much without needing to pause to breathe…

"Yeah? What's in it for you?" She affects outrage.

"Don't be stupid. Oh, no, wait, I forgot that's impossible. Carry on, then." He narrows his eyes and grins derisively.

"Come on, ol' _Mac_Donald." She hates it when he does that to her name. (It doesn't help that he after he'd realized how _much_ it bugs her, he'd started leaving plastic farm animal figurines all over the place with her name markered onto them. She had not taken that well at all.) "As truly terrifying as it'd be to believe you'd actually come to check up on me for dear old dad, I'm not buying it. Nah, they've gotta be paying you to annoy me. That seems like the sort of payback they'd think to inflict on me after _years_ of doing nothing but being on my very best behavior." She barks out a laugh and flounces toward the kitchen. After a beat, he follows her. "So, what is it?" She throws an eyebrow over her shoulder at him.

"What is what?" Pah. And she's always accusing _him_ of never listening...

"The _payment_, Case. Is your allowance bigger than mine? They promise you a shopping spree? Oooh, or d'you work on commission? If I pass all my classes, are they gonna throw in a car?" She's making a bigger effort than usual not to rise to his baiting, because instead of yelling at his deliberate slander, she takes a deep breath and starts carefully uncapping the plastic containers as she lays them out on the counter, in an obviously calculated configuration.

The attempt at self-restraint amuses him. He's looking forward to chipping away at it till she inevitably cracks.

"_Shockingly_, the only 'payment' I'm receiving is the _gratitude_ of our parents—"

"'Gratitude?' For real? I'd definitely've held out for the car." He scoffs.

"Gratitude is its own reward!" Derek shakes his head, chagrinned. The girl just refuses to be taught. "And now, of course, I'm also getting a _migraine_. Perhaps I should consider asking for compensation, after all. If only to cover the _extensive_ psychotherapy I'm going to eventually need after having to endure _you_ for so long."

"Be honest now, Case. You've _always_ needed extensive psychological help." He's eventually going to learn not to goad her when she's got a large, flesh-gouging knife in her hand. Because the look she's giving him? Not as encouragingly non-homicidal as he'd like.

"The blender, Venturi. Before I commit a crime of passion and disembowel you." She continues chopping (meaningfully) on the cutting board and he decides it can't hurt to pull out the appliance for her.

* * *

Several minutes and a bathroom break later,

"Casey. _What_ is that supposed to be?"

"It's a superfood medley! We've got blueberries and pomegranate seeds, apples, bananas, and blue-green algae—"

"Excuse me, _what_?"

"It's really very good for you –and tasty, too! And here's some broccoli and…" He tunes her out because he's not entirely sure he _wants_ to know what some of this stuff is. How she can stomach the idea of eating _algae_…yech. Casey, Keener Connoisseur (--and just when exactly had _that_ word managed to sneak into his vocabulary?).

"I can't eat any of that, you realize." Even as he reaches out and pops a blueberry into his mouth. "I _do_ have principles." He says very importantly, and Casey rolls her eyes. Again. She does that a lot around him.

"Principles that forbid you to eat things your body won't later _hate_ you for?"

"Hey, now. I do _plenty_ of things to keep my body happy." She gives him a dubious '_oh_, _really_?' look and picks up her artfully-arranged snack tray, circling the tiny island in the kitchen and making her way back into the living room.

"I'm sure your body will appreciate the reminder when your pee starts to burn." Derek actually snickers a bit at this, a little surprised (and impressed) at the spiteful nature of the comment.

"Naughty, naughty Casey." Something about the way he says it makes him pause, and she almost-doesn't catch herself when she trips over the floor in front of him. Moving on… "You've got a dirty mind, McDonald. It just so happens that I was _referring_ to _hockey_."

She reaches the coffee table and bends at the waist to set the tray beside her mountain of belongings, and he catches the tag of her pants flipped out in sharp relief against her skin. Casey has this Thing about needing to have her clothes in perfect order, and he reflects briefly on tucking it back under the hem for her before he catches the impulse by the throat and quietly murders it.

"_Right_. Of course you were." She doesn't look nearly as flustered as he wants her to be. "But since we're on the subject, I'd say the inherent risks of playing such a fundamentally _violent_ sport far outweigh any health benefits you might be receiving for engaging in such a demanding physical activity." Ugh. Textbook Casey. It was a deft, swift change of subject, though, he has to give her that. "And even if that weren't true, you undo any _good_ that might be accomplished by participating in a competitive sport when you _constantly_ stuff your face with pizza and chips and cake and candy and _more_ pizza and now alcohol –don't try to deny it—and fast food at _3 am _and—"

"Think I got it, Case." She takes a nibble out of a wedge of banana and he doesn't make the obvious joke.

"You're in trouble when your metabolism slows down, Venturi." She looks like she can't _wait_ for the day. "Those boyish good looks will be gone forever…" She sighs mock-wistfully and then catches his gaze and freezes.

"'Boyish good looks,' huh?" She smacks her gaze away from his face and starts backtracking. _This_ is more like it.

"I was just _joking_ –no one really thinks you're handsome—"

"Now I'm 'handsome?' Well, Case. Didn't know you cared—"

"No, no, _no_! Agh! You _know_ I'm not serious!"

"Yeah, but you weren't uncomfortable a moment ago, either. You're more amusing this way." She slices him a look sharp enough to cut glass. He rolls her a boyish grin.

"I am _not_ here for your amusement, Derek."

"I _wish_ you weren't here at all, or at least doing something useful, like…oh, say, ordering me a pizza, or doing my laundry, _or_! Ordering me a pizza _while_ doing my laundry."

"De-_rek_!"

"Yeah, who knew I had it in me to be so efficient? Hey! Maybe I'll even pull out my old note cards and make a _list_ of all the things you could do for me while you're here. I'll put them in order of their priority, and then see which ones can be consolidated—"

"Don't you _ever_ SHUT UP?"

"Legends tell of a time _before_ Derek Venturi, a Dark, Uncertain Time—"

"A time when fathers needed not fear for the virtue of their daughters—"

"Unimaginable, isn't it?" Despite herself, she laughs, and he takes the opportunity to sweep her all her bags off of the table with his leg, which he then props up beside the platter.

"_DE-REK!_"

* * *

They end up watching a movie that neither of them want to watch (the only compromise they're capable of making is one in which neither of them win), so he isn't surprised that they argue throughout the entirety of it and that he can't even remember what the name of the flick was, let alone who any of the actors were or if there'd been any plot of which to speak.

He complains a lot about her 'Superfood Medley,' but he eats it anyway (well, the fruit at the very least –she couldn't _really_ have expected _him_ to munch on _broccoli_ and _algae_), and even though he knows she wants to roll her eyes when he breaks out a bag of potato chips, she doesn't.

She does snag a few later, though, and neither of them realize it because they're watching an infomercial about a 'male enhancement' drug and teaming up to make fun of it. Derek is careful to avoid any _real_ sort of solidarity, though, and scrupulously takes an occasional shot at Casey in between the cooperative joking.

As it's nearing one a.m., Derek has to nudge her awake a couple times before she pulls herself to her feet and declares that it's the perfect time to _study_.

When two a.m. rolls around, he finally gets Casey to relent and she pulls out a deck of cards instead. She suggests they play Speed, doesn't wait for him to either endorse or refuse the proposition, and starts laying out the cards. Trouble is, he's always been more a BS kinda guy, so he makes his objection and they end up playing War.

At three-thirty in the morning, Derek is drooling on the sofa cushions and after Casey carelessly throws (_not_ gently drapes) a blanket over him, she goes to steal his bed.

* * *

She wakes him in the morning (after she makes his bed –but only because she knows he hates it when she does) and refuses to make him breakfast when he groggily attempts to order her around, which is the beginning of a short-lived, if especially confused, argument over who decided Casey could stay the night without properly compensating her host.

He eventually makes a bowl of cereal for himself, grumbling all the while about 'disloyal younger brothers' and their 'total lack of altruism' for refusing to come be his live-in, volunteer servant. Casey generously offers to take care of the dishes when he trudges grumpily to his room to get his things ready for his hockey game. He doesn't thank her and she doesn't ask him to.

She cleans the morning's dishes (and a few of the ones that've been piling up throughout the week, but only a _few_ –she's not his _maid_, after all) and sets them on the drying rack before she heads into the little living room unit and starts packing up her own things.

Some ten minutes later, Derek emerges looking totally self-possessed (not that that's unusual) and casually confident, hockey stick in one hand and massive equipment bag slung over the opposite shoulder.

"Ready?" She asks patronizingly, and his jaw tightens. There's one integral piece of this puzzle that's still missing…

"As if I could be anything else." He says, and that's when he gets the Panicked Look on his face. She smirks as his stick and bag clatter noisily to the ground at very nearly the same instant, and then she's following him as he sprints into the kitchen to vomit into the sink. She's in no hurry to get there (he _definitely_ doesn't like people to witness these moments, even though everyone who knows him is aware that they happen –and _no one_ judges him for it), so she arrives just in time to watch him straighten and Not Look at her. She quietly hands him a hand towel and a glass of water and leaves the kitchen without a word, and it's like nothing at all has happened when he reemerges and tells her that she's looking particularly Alice Cooper today.

"Call later and lemme know how badly you lost so I can tell our parents when they inevitably contact _me_ to know the score of the game since _you_, apparently, are incapable of answering your own cell phone."

Then, after the Obligatory Parting Snark, they leave together and separate with a farewell glare the moment their feet hit the landing.

* * *

It isn't _routine_ because Casey _likes_ routine, and she usually ascribes anything involving time spent with Derek to the list of things she does _not_ like.

It's just…something she happens to do. Occasionally. Okay, most Fridays (only the ones before hockey games!). But only when she doesn't already have plans. Or...plans she can't reschedule.

Anyway, it's…it's _volunteer_ work. Helping the (jerk-ish and insufferable) needy in times of desperation. After all, George _had_ asked her to keep an eye on his perennially obnoxious son, and (no matter how loathsome and generally exasperating he is) Derek _is_ a familiar face, a tenuous link to the home she misses, and he's (sort-of-not-really) _family_, besides.

And even if he seems anything-but-thrilled to have her over to his apartment, he never asks her to leave (he never asks her _over_, either, but she suspects that's just because his ego won't allow it), so she stays. In a sick sort of way, he keeps her sharp, and she keeps him…well. Distracted.

Which is the kind of the point, anyway.

(He doesn't have to know that she goes to his hockey games. Because their parents _do_ pay her to film them.)

* * *

(I should probably confess that I came perilously close to having Casey keep Derek distracted in a more...interesting sort of way. Although the suggestion would _totally_ have been Derek's idea. The slut.)

Anywho. One down. Who knows how many more to go. And one Very Sexy Sundae to thoughtlessly murder.


	2. book case

This fic sponsored by Insomnia --the number one doctor-recommended remedy for sleep!

Seriously, though? Speed-written in about two hours (while I was _trying_ to write my research paper...which is actually a lie, since I was instead _trying_ to write an entirely different one-shot for this collection, but this one kept interrupting), so it's probably a big jumble of George-style 'wha?,' but I'm fond enough of it as it is not to care. Not really a _point_ or a _theme_, per se, but I so rarely bother with either of those I suppose that's really more of a moot point than anything else.

Meanwhile.

Everyone who has commented thus far has my sincerest thanks --I _feed_ on your reviews, like some disgusting, bottom-feeding parasite. Hearts n' sh*t, chums.

Pertaining to the story: Casey's got an on-campus job at the library, and Derek uses this knowledge to his advantage.

[i own the Nameless Neanderthal. otherwise? nada.]

* * *

_::in which Casey saves Derek's life, and then promptly endangers it again::_

Casey's sending out overdue notices to students via e-mail when he comes sprinting into the library, out-of-breath, panicked-looking, and frantic.

"So I'm gonna make this real fast, Case, as I may have only a few seconds left to live."

"What've you done now?" She wonders, immediately reproving.

"What _haven't_ I done? Look, that's not the point!" His eyes keep flashing to the doors of the library, and he seems very much on edge. "I need you to use that Casey-fabulous imagination of yours and pretend we're back in Opposite Land –remember, that freaky place where I actually need your—" His eyes flick to the doors, "—_help_? Hide me. _Now_."

"Who is she?" He doesn't miss the censure on her face.

"_She's_ not the problem. _He_ is. _Cas-ey_." She stares at him blankly for a moment, digesting the new rift in her name. Then, finally,

"Over the counter, under my desk." He starts to raise an eyebrow at her, peripherally taking in the skirt wrapped around her thighs (and what this may potentially mean for his Virgin Eyes if she happens to need to sit down at her desk while he's beneath it), when the library door smacks open and he teleports (not jumps or vaults or climbs; he is simply suddenly) over the partition separating him from Casey, and he wastes no time rounding and then ducking under the desk she'd just indicated as hers.

He hears Casey shuffling papers somewhere nearby and starts breathing into the sleeve of his jacket to stifle the noise of it. Then,

"Hey, girl—" Comes the voice of the Disgruntled Male.

"Excuse me, but I _have_ a name. It's Casey." She says primly.

"Listen, have you seen a skinny little skeeze of a guy come by? He was probably running." Derek starts to pray for the sort of phenomenon that will enable a girl like Casey McDonald to lie convincingly: a miracle.

"There is no running permitted in the library." She says with decided authority, and Derek tries not to snigger_. Oh_, _Casey_. Couldn't fib to save her life, but give her the opportunity to tout The Rules and herald their Indelible Importance and she's suddenly a natural at the Dodge-the-Question game.

"That's nice. Look, was there any guy who came in just like, a minute before I did? People outside saw him run into the building."

"You're clearly upset about something. I'm not sure I could, in good conscience, point you in his direction, even if I _had_ seen someone like that come through here. I'll have you know that I do not condone violence." Derek rolls his eyes under the desk.

"Know what? Never mind. I'll go look for him myself." There's a half-a-second's worth of silence before,

"There's no _running_ in the _library_!"

* * *

"Wanna tell me what that was all about?" She sinks to kneeling before him, one eyebrow arched.

"Not even a little." He says pleasantly, and starts to push himself forward to leave the small space until her arms appear abruptly on either side of the tiny cubbyhole, effectively boxing him in (for the moment, at least, until he decides it's not worth it and shoves her aside). He's suddenly much closer to Casey's consternation than he's used to (or ready for), and he retreats slightly, instinctively.

"Well, that's too bad. I think you owe it to me, as your reluctant accomplice, to know if I've just aided and abetted a felon."

"No felony here, Library." She doesn't look convinced. Or very happy about the improvised epithet. "Just a good ol' fashioned game of Hide-n-Seek. We've been having a running game all week. The guy's undefeated and I have the Venturi honor to uphold, after all." Now she just looks annoyed.

"De-_rek_."

"Alright, so it _might'_ve been a private, one-time game of Strip Poker at a party, and I may've _accidentally_ won a hand against his girlfriend, and the rest may _indeed_ be history, but in my defense, Case, it was just the luck of the draw!" He smirks, winks at her while her nose wrinkles in disgust. "_My_ luck of the draw, anyway. She. Was. _Smokin'_. Used to be a gymnast, and had this _body_—" He is genuinely surprised when she gives his shoulder a hard shove.

"How _could you_? I can't _believe_ I helped you avoid your comeuppance!" He blinks past the look on her face that tells him she's disappointed in him, the one that indicates she expected _more_ of him.

"I _helped_ the poor schmuck, Casey. I was just trying to demonstrate that Lacy, or Larissa? Lisa. Laney…? Whatever. I was trying to show him how untrustworthy she was. Us men have to look out for each other." She seems truly appalled now and leans dangerously into his darkened space. He swallows wrong and starts choking –and Casey ignores his duress in favor of glaring at him until he's sufficiently recovered.

"If you were so keen on _helping him_, you should definitely have been willing to stand your ground and own up to what you did. Maybe he'd even have _thanked_ you." Derek stares at her in stupefaction because he's beginning to believe she really does want him dead.

"Did you _see _the guy? He's three of me on _steroids_. I said I was scrappy, Casey, not _suicidal_. In any case, you've gotta give the man a little time to warm to the enlightened, free-love philosophies of Derokrates." He sees humor twinkle in her eyes, the latent _want_ to find him funny, but then she's recovering from her lapse in record time and he watches the impulse smother as she instead scowls at him. "He'll come around in time, and we'll laugh about it. I'll buy him a drink, we'll swap war stories. We'll eventually be good enough buddies that he'll tell me when the 'roids start to shrink his…Canadian Pride." He reaffirms his knowledge that Casey has absolutely _zero _sense of humor when she doesn't even _almost_ crack a grin.

"_Or_ you'll have to go into hiding. Because I'm sure to run into him at some point on campus and –actually, he's gotta come back _this_ way eventually to leave the building, so whenever he comes back down I'll go ahead and let him know you're here…or better yet, I'll just tell him where you _live_ so _I_ don't have to clean up the mess! Perfect." Derek adopts the traditional Deer-in-the-Headlights expression and decides to change tactics.

"What happened to you being a pacifist? Be like Ghandry, Case. Let all be forgiven and forgotten." She trades up in expression for one both insulted and incredulous.

"'_Ghandi_,' you big stupid idiot. And remember, Derek, that you're the _exception_ to _every rule_. Mine included. If some guy wants to break your face for ruining an important relationship with a girl you were just killing time with, I'm just going to have to let him do it—" He holds up a hand for silence and pastes on a more somber façade.

Okay, new strategy, this time without any names he's not absolutely sure about.

"Look, Case." He meets her gaze and holds it. "The truth is that I…that I really _like_ this girl—"

"Whose name you can't even remember?" Damn it! He keeps forgetting about Casey's freakish memory. (He's convinced she has a separate area of her brain devoted entirely to retaining information she can later use against him. She does this with everyone else, too, surely, but Derek likes to think he has his very own little subdivision in her mind, his every breach of character filed away in her compartment-like brain alphabetically by date, severity of infraction, persons involved, number of 'De-_rek!_'s uttered, etc.)

"I'm telling you, we had a _connection_. It was like…it was like I was…I haven't felt that way since…" He looks away, affects Wounded Nostalgia, and he watches out of the corner of his eye as she falls headlong into the deception. She's just _too easy_. "Since…_Sally_." He manages to make his voice waver a little, closes his eyes briefly as if to stave off the pain of her memory, and then peeks cautiously at Casey. She's clearly bought into it hook, line, and sinker. She's wearing the big, watery eyes, doing the photogenic head-cocked-just-so, pouting-lip bit, and he almost can't stand how simple this is. He wishes that he could say it's all a reflection of how _good_ he is at lying, but he knows that it's mostly only working because Casey is the Most Gullible Person on the face of the planet.

"Oh, Derek, I'm…I had no _idea_." And then she's leaning forward to do That _Thing_ he has made frequently and explicitly clear he has a RULE against (and she's supposed to be All About the rules!), and _why_ didn't he see this _coming_ and stick with the harmless snark? How can he not have taken into account the fact that he has no avenue for _ESCAPE_ under this desk and that this woman has a _history _of Assaulting with the Intent to Be Affectionate?

Still, he makes an effort and throws himself against the back panel of the desk, understandably horrified when she follows him and manages to sling her arms around his neck before the task is made impossible by him wedging himself solidly against the paneling.

There's a moment where the only thing happening is breathing, Casey's whisper-soft and warm as it glides over the back of his neck, but it's followed shortly thereafter by the cool-smooth pressure of her cheek against his jaw, and he holds himself very still, willing the moment to be over because her hair smells like vanilla and cream. (There is entirely too much Casey in this tiny a space.) He doesn't say anything because there seems to have been some sort of major communication breakdown between his brain and his mouth.

Then she's pulling away, he remembers suddenly to breathe, and he's about to ask her why she smells like a bakery puked in her hair, but then the Angry Male has suddenly returned and announces himself with a somewhat wary,

"Um, Miss…?" To which Derek automatically (re-)stiffens (he's as good as set in stone by this point) and Casey reacts in surprise and smashes her head against the underside of the desk with a sharp cry of pain. He does not forget to smile sardonically at her when she's finally able to open her eyes past the agony. "You need any help?" Comes a second summons, and Casey glares at him for another few seconds before her eyes drop to his chest,

"Eyes above the neck, McDonald." He can't resist whispering, and then, what looks like inspiration shines in her eyes (he's fairly certain he's seen himself wearing that expression before…) and she darts a –remarkably adept—hand out to pluck the wallet from his shirt pocket before she scoots out and stands, smoothing her clothes while Derek's field of vision fills with a pair of legs encased in a skirt. Then the legs are gone and the indignation of Casey's theft sets in.

"Sorry," comes Casey's tenor somewhere beyond him (the reverb under the desk makes her voice all tinny), and his eyes are clamping shut because, of course, her poor lying skills are about to blow his cover. And then he's going to be pulled apart by a real, live cave troll. "I dropped my wallet, and then, klutz that I am, when I tried to reach for it I ended up kicking it under the desk. One _Indiana Jones_ expedition and a bump on the noggin' later and here I am." Actually, that was…passable. Casey-brand cheese, for sure, but _compelling _cheese nevertheless. Derek pinches himself to verify that he's awake.

"Oh, uh…'kay. Well, hey, I…just wanted to say I'm sorry for –earlier. I—I didn't find the guy, just to let you know. I was just…my girlfriend –or my _ex_-girlfriend now, I guess—just cheated on me with him and I guess I just…I got kinda…emotional."

Wait. Is this guy using the situation as a _line_? And Casey thought _he_ was scum? (Truth be told, however, he'd be impressed if he weren't already pissed.)

"She was just…really important to me." Derek wonders if he should start counting the number of 'just's that pop out of this guy's mouth to kill the time. "And I suppose I just…I needed someone to blame, you know?"

"I _do_ know." She says, sympathy squishing sickeningly out of every word. He can't believe she's _buying_ this. Although, he supposes he can't expect her to be selectively naive. As with everything involving Casey, it seems to be an all-or-nothing sort of deficiency. "And don't worry about it. I'm sorry, too, for being so sharp with you. And…" She sighs heavily, he suspects largely for effect. "I…I _did _see the boy in question." Derek's posture is suddenly better than it has ever been –his back is ramrod straight. _Casey_ is about to _rat him out_! "He came running through the doors and used the elevator to go upstairs, and then he came back down and ran out shortly after you went upstairs to check for him." There's an unnaturally extended pause between when she finishes and when the Hulk starts talking again, but he's too relieved that she hasn't thrown him to the wolves to really notice.

"I can't tell you how big a help you've been, um…"

"Casey, remember?" The half-man, half-primordial beast guffaws and Derek winces at how like the sound of a jackhammer it is.

"Right, Casey. Thank you." A pause. "Well, I should be going. I'll definitely be back, though. For…books. And possibly your phone number?" Derek is outraged. Casey will certainly _not_ be giving her digits to the tiny giant who had only moments ago been out to bash in his skull.

"Tell you what. Promise not to hurt the heartless bastard–much—when you find him, and the next time you come in to…find books, I'll help you out." He _hears_ the smile in her voice. Meanwhile, his jaw has fallen open in shock. What the hell just happened?

"It's a promise."

Ten, maybe fifteen seconds later, Casey's back, hand out-stretched to return his wallet. He grabs it before she has the chance to jerk it away.

"Casey."

"Derek." She looks rather proud of herself. He won't be honest and say that he's proud of her, too. (For getting better at the lying thing, not for the probably-going-out-with-Stretch-Armstrong thing.)

"You're going to 'help out' the guy who wants to _dismember_ me?"

"Well, I _know_ he doesn't have a girlfriend anymore. And the dismembering thing _does_ give us some common ground."

"He says 'just' every other word!" Derek is grasping at straws because this should be _obvious_.

"Probably '_just_' nervous." It's the sort of pun his dad would make, making it both disturbing _and_ unfunny. "He _had_ just been very rude to me."

"I remember that. _You_ are going _out_ with that."

"Why the heck do you even _care_?"

A beat –their eyes meet, spring apart —never happened.

"Do you really need me to go over the _'he wants to make a necklace of my teeth_' all over again?" She huffs exasperatedly (she's always doing that and he wonders idly if it's a habit she picked up before she met him or if it's another one of those Derek-inspired compulsive behaviors she's adopted over the years) and grabs the edges of the desk above him, clearly about to stand up again. "Didn't think ya' had it in ya', Book Case. Betrayal? Can't trust anyone these days…" She flips him a glance and hunkers back down onto her knees.

"Derek, I can't betray you if I've never been on your side. And anyway, I asked him not to hurt you when he saw you, if you recall."

"And that is _so_ going to keep him from punching straight through my stomach and out my spine. Casey, you're going to be going out with the baby gorilla who _murdered_ me." She laughs at him. She _laughs_ at him, the Dead Man Crouched Under the Desk.

"Guess you'd better watch your back, then, _bro_." She claps him once on the shoulder –for which she receives the most menacing glare he can muster—and starts to stand again. "And maybe stay away from other boys' girlfriends while you're at it." She leans down, hands on her knees, and oh, he can see right down that blouse. His eyes don't linger, but the image is seared (dreadfully, of course) into his brain. "Hang tight here for ten or so minutes and then leave out the staff entrance. It's by the water fountains on the left." She points in some direction that he misses. His mind is not functioning at full capacity at the moment, apparently. He doesn't guess why. "My code is 6888. Easy enough that even _you_ should be able to memorize it."

"Six-triple-eight. Got it." He's going to smell like a damned pastry if she doesn't get the hell out of his bubble.

"I've got books to re-shelve." She starts to rise, stops. "Oh. And, uh, maybe find somewhere to stay tonight." His face twists in confusion, but she only smiles amiably and (finally) leaves his immediate vicinity.

She's completely out-of-sight before he connects her parting words to the underlying malicious intent, and then he's turning his wallet inside-out looking for…his student info and ID cards, which are now mysteriously and conspicuously _missing_.

He doesn't know how to feel about the sudden realization that Casey has given Meathead McStone Age all his pertinent information (name, student number, photograph, on-campus _address_), and that she has not only _deceived him_, but that she had apparently _seen through_ his lie, and also! She evidently has no problems with having him _killed_.

He's furious at first, then vaguely terrified, and eventually, just impressed.

And _then_ he decides that since Casey is finally playing by his rules and has –it seems—graduated to Conspiring to Commit Murder (it's always the crazy, neurotic ones that you never suspect…), he is going to have to start upping the ante.

* * *

This makes two bullies Casey's had to stand up to for Derek. It must be love, ne?

That, or Casey's been dipping into Derek's peanut butter.


	3. distance divisions

Here's another of those one-shots that just sort of bled out onto the keyboard after I punctured my temple with the edge of the desk. You can imagine my surprise when (after they revived me and I spent the next several years convalescing before they even let me _near_ my home again) I discovered it.

Also, I think I should make perfectly clear at this point that I have _never, EVER_ updated as often as this in such a short amount of time **EVER**. It's totally unprecedented and I just wanted to make sure no one gets into the habit of thinking that this is normal behavior for me when I suddenly and inexplicably drop off the face of the planet (as I am prone to doing).

For now, however, I am deep, _deep_ into my obsession with this show (and Michael Seater *faints*), and this fandom is gawdd-dayum awesome at keeping us writers appeased with reviews, so I think it's safe to go ahead and say that there should be _some_ regularity with the updates (even if they're just blippy ones like this).

MEANWHILE.

Go heckle TheBucket and the LighteningStrikes ladies for updates. (Nicely. Let's keep it clean, people.)

This vignette was an exercise in examining how pervasive Casey and Derek are in each other's lives. Neither of them seems particularly thrilled with the results, but that's just because they're still in Obstinate Denial.

And.

[I'm a college student. I don't even own my _car_. (It's collateral for my loans.) Which means I probably don't own LWD, either.]

* * *

_::in which both Casey and Derek exhibit a proficiency for botching each other's love lives without even needing to be present:: _

He's really such a very nice boy.

He's got these vibrantly _green_ eyes (green like sunlight crashing through malachite, electric and expressive and wistful-sigh-inducingly mesmerizing) and this stylishly feathered auburn hair (it looks soft and clean and falls tantalizingly into his eyes; she can't help but want to brush it back, just to _feel_ it, just to _touch_ him) and this ridiculously captivating (sumptuously _French_) accent that makes her knees weak and wobbly (she's been _especially_ clumsy lately –he's helping her up now, in fact, from an unexpected tumble _up_ the stairs—and though Derek isn't here to point it out and make fun of her for it, Casey in full-blown Klutzilla Mode tends to be her first indication that she's Got It Bad for a guy, so she's been trying to wear fewer skirts and more sensible shoes in the hopes of making her wipe-outs _slightly_ less embarrassing –if not also less frequent).

He's unthinkingly courteous and exquisitely well-mannered and opens the car door for her before she climbs in. He's effortlessly clever and tremendously witty without the spite she usually associates with such an attribute (no thanks to _Certain Someones_). He's intelligent enough to challenge her and sophisticated enough to do so on a wide variety of topics, ranging from philosophy and politics to the mechanics of language and the merits of being well-read (which he most certainly _is_). He tells her endlessly fascinating stories about himself (he has lived in _France_, after all, where even the inane and the lackluster are somehow dynamic and dazzling), and she flips through memories like pages of a book to find one or two that are refreshingly Devoid of Derek to share with him.

He laughs (or at least smiles warmly) at all her jokes, even when she's sure they've fallen flat. He supports her when she throws herself behind a Cause, encourages her to be involved and proactive, offers his help in whatever way she'll have it.

He doesn't tease her about the lists she makes, doesn't harass her for Needing Things to Be Just Right, doesn't turn her every remark against her, doesn't laugh at her when she grubs for the grade she deserves, doesn't broadcast her humiliations to anyone and everyone they meet, doesn't belittle her taste in music, doesn't fault her for being a romantic, doesn't con her friends into going out with him and then thoughtlessly dump them after two dates, doesn't eat food off of her plate without asking, doesn't pair all her socks with the wrong mates…he is, put simply, Not Derek. He's everything that Derek Isn't, and then some –the Anti-Derek, if you will.

He is, in short, _perfect_.

"Casey, Casey, Casey," he says, shaking his head at her with a gently wry expression on his face, and something hard drops into her gut (she feels suddenly, mysteriously sick) at the same time irrational anger flares into existence and makes her skin feel superheated, tingly, stretched too tight over her bones.

It is in the moment immediately following her name-in-triplet (pushed out of his mouth with that eerie-familiar, breathy, sing-song quality that says –playfully—that she's totally hopeless) that she knows it's just not going to work out.

(Later she's going to phone Derek and yell at him for managing to ruin her life even when he isn't there to do it in person.)

* * *

Derek identifies this one by the birthmark on her shoulderblade (it's shaped like a triangle, which means it's shaped like a slice of pizza, and it is therefore instantly distinctive) and the color of her hair (which is blonde and pink and blue). He thinks it's definitely possible that she mentioned she was a studio arts major, but he's not certain (there've been several of those lately and they're all sort of getting jumbled together), so he's probably not going to add that to his mental sticky-note. (He _is_ considering letting Casey draw up a list or two for him, though, to avoid any future confusion; girls tend to like it, he has discovered, when he remembers their names and interests –and, more importantly, they're willing to do things _he_ likes when he bothers to make the effort.)

As a rule, he's very careful about keeping names out of the bedroom (something else he is learning is that girls don't always react positively to being called by someone else's name in the middle of Derek Venturi's Special Activities Time) so as to avoid any unnecessary unpleasantness and encourage continued patronage of…the arts. (Casey would be proud of his conscientiousness.) It seemed only logical, then, to come up with some sort of system that would enable him to tell one Charming Young Lady from the next. So far, the Distinguishing Physical Characteristics plan has been working beautifully, but as the weeks come and go (and the girls with them), he's beginning to fear he's going to have to invest in a pack of 3x5s, and maybe a pen.

Pizza Mole is contorting her body in the most bizarre (and wonderful) way when it happens.

"_De-rek_," she says, her eyebrows waggling at him suggestively even though the tone of her voice indicates she's annoyed (had he been Spacing Out again? damn it all--), and something catches in his throat (he can't swallow or breathe past the obstruction) at the same time bewildering dread crawls through his veins and makes him feel cold, stiff, like the world is reeling (oh, nausea, his faithful friend).

He finishes (of _course_ he finishes –he's _Derek Venturi_), but it's not his best work, and even though she's very pretty and actually somewhat interesting (beyond her arts-and-crafts aptitude), he isn't sorry he's never going to see her again.

(Later he's going to break into Casey's apartment and glues all her hair accessories to the wall for managing to somehow ruin _sex_ for him without even trying.)

* * *

There's no doubt in my mind that Derek's going to be a manwhore in college.

I _am_ somewhat skeptical that he'd bother with the 'arts-and-crafts' euphemisms for sex (certainly while he's _having it_), but I _like_ euphemisms for sex, so he's just going to have to deal with it.

Muffin time.


	4. in sickness

HELLOOOOOOOOO, chums.

Sorries for the Extended Absence (I did give fair warning, though). School (mid-terms, research papers) locked me in the toolshed and refused to let me out until it had thoroughly broken my spirit. I managed to etch this into the shed walls using an old, rusty nail, and then I copied it down later, after I made my Amazing Escape.

*ahem* Actually, I typed this out yesterday during a MUCH NEEDED break from researching ancient Minoan script; I'm returning to said research immediately after posting this, and it's unlikely I'll resurface again for at least a couple of weeks, but I _will_ be back (you couldn't keep me away if you _wanted_ to), I promise.

MEANWHILE.

Apparently, while I've been away, ruining my eyes one scholarly article at a time, ALL of the LWD Gods have been churning out more of their masterworks (TheBucket updated, WLD updated LOTS, elizabeth and snapple wrote NEW STORIES, and my brain is BLEEDING onto the nice carpet and THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T GO NICE PLACES), and I _promise _all of you that I'll be reading and writing the mammoth reviews you all deserve tomorrow, when I decide to free my brain from prehistoric Aegean BONDAGE (oooooh, kiiiinky) for some breathing time. (For the record, I bow at your collective feetses in DELIGHT and AWE.)

AND!

Premise? Derek is ill and Casey somehow ends up taking care of him (I say 'somehow,' because I don't even think SHE knows quite how it happened.) ALSO. This is Casey POV. *shudder* Which means it's probably bonkers. But...eh. Had to try it out sometime. Derek can only have so many dirty thoughts before I end up (accidentally) throwing them into The Sex.

ONE MORE THING (I know, I know, _shut up already_)! The reviews? Seriously? Amazing. You guys are flat out the best reviewers EVER. Take that to the bank. (Not for real. The tellers would laugh at you.)

And now. Before this gets any MORE ridiculously prolix (I'm probably going to Have Relations with that word, btw)...on with the fic!(...after the disclaimer.)

[_I_ own nothing. You've got it all backwards. Michael Seater owns _me_.]

* * *

_::in which Casey weighs the pros and cons of Murdering Derek::_

Her first impulse is to smash her phone, but in one of her more recent Weekend Cleaning kicks she'd recovered the Breathing Exercises pamphlets Paul had given her in high school, so instead she closes her eyes and focuses on the process of respiration: _in through the nose, out through the mouth, calming thoughts_, but "I'm a Barbie Girl/in the Barbie World/Life in plastic, it's fantastic!" is still blaring at full-blast when she grabs the cell and scribbles in on her mental list of Things to Do Today: 'Kill Derek.' (She has to squeeze it into the margins, beside and above and underneath countless Variations on the Theme: 'Permanently Maim Derek,' 'Visit Unholy Retribution Unto Derek,' 'Fashion Derek's Ribcage Into Hat,' etc.)

"Unnnngh…" Well, if it isn't the Imminently Deceased, himself.

"I know you think it's _funny_ to change people's ring tones, _Derek_, but you may be surprised to learn that it's _rude_ and disruptive and _very_ annoying, especially since it means you've been going through my _things_, _again_! And you ARE aware that these things cost _money_, aren't you? I'll be expecting a full reimbursement if _you're _expecting to live long enough to see your nineteenth birthday." She expects some flippant (and doubtlessly uncouth) remark, so she's a tad startled when instead she receives only an odd noise that might be her step-brother drowning in his own phlegm on the other side of the line.

"Casey…" He says, and sounds dejected and feeble enough that if he'd been any other person in the world other than _Derek_, her heartstrings would be stretched taut and some invisible little minstrel'd be blithely thrumming away. "It's all over for me, Casey." She rolls her eyes. (_Such_ a Drama Queen.)

He's clearly plotting something.

"I'm not falling for it, Derek. Whatever you're planning, I want no part of it." The wet cough on the other end is too well-timed and doesn't faze her. "I don't buy it. Find someone else to dupe; I've got homework to do." She's about to flip the phone shut.

"Ca—" He starts, and is cut off by what sounds like an unexpected case of Hacking Up a Lung. "Casey," he rasps, and she hesitates (which, experience tells her, is the moment he always chooses to strike; animals can smell fear, but Derek has a preternatural sense for inducing –and then taking advantage of—that instant of vacillation, that half-second flash of indecision), "I'm _dying_, Casey." She takes another few seconds before she responds,

"So…you're…contacting me to what, exactly? Arrange the funeral?" She waits a bit for the scathing reply, but when none seems forthcoming, she panics and starts rambling. "I suppose we really _should_ hash out all the details. After all, you're gonna have to decide if you want an open or a closed casket at the wake –I'd recommend open, by the way, if you're asking my opinion. Not that I think anyone would actually want to _see_ you—let alone in rigor, but I was thinking we could maybe make an event of it; I'd prepare finger-foods and bring fun, festive-colored sharpies for everybody and we can doodle on your face before we drop the lid…to lighten the mood, of course, and not to make a farce of your _truly unfortunate_ death." She's fleetingly alarmed at her own morbidity. And at how _much_ she sounds like him.

There's a long moment of silence interrupted only by a wheezing cough on his end. It sounds to Casey like he'd been trying to laugh, and might have succeeded if he hadn't had to stop to expel another one of those pesky organ things. She's wondering if she should start worrying.

"Remind me not to let you handle my funeral services." He says (at last –who knows what she'd have said if he hadn't finally _spoken_). "Actually, now that you mention it, I already promised Ed the honor. Kid's got some big ideas." She doesn't trust herself to speak when he pauses. "That was pretty dark, Case." He sounds _proud_.

She's going to hell.

"I…I didn't mean…I was just—"

"Never mind. Listen, Case, I need you over here pronto." She tries several times to phrase the '_what_?' just right, so that it expresses the correct amount of both umbrage and disdain (and also probably astonishment), but it keeps coming out garbled and nonsensical, so eventually she settles for,

"_Excuse me_?"

"I'm a wounded soldier." This time his cough _is_ for effect, she's sure. "Do your patriotic duty and come make me some soup." The _nerve_ of this boy! Can't even _ask_ _politely_ for her help–not that she'd ever be caught dead _giving_ it to _him_, even if he _is _dying, because she HATES him, but apparently even on his death bed he can't be bothered to so much as _pretend_ to make a civilized request! Selfish, hateful, disrespectful, presumptuous—

"Why don't you have one of your harlots take care of you?" She sneers (there's more venom there than she intends, and it surprises her), and he doesn't miss a beat.

"Not up to the task. I've been having auditions all day and they just aren't cutting it." She hopes he's joking, but she's aware of the very real possibility that he's not just being facetious. "None of them will give me a sponge bath, and so far they've all refused to wear the slutty nurse uniform. So what's the point?"

"I hope you're not trying to suggest that I give you a sponge bath." She feels herself flushing the instant the words leave her lips, and there's a long silence on the other end she doesn't try to measure or explain. She swallows hard. "Because…because you _do_ realize that I would try to _drown_ you."

"Ah, there's my Charity Casey." She morphs from embarrassed to flustered in the space of a heartbeat and doesn't know why. "So, look, I'll have the doorman let you in when you get here—"

"'_Get there_?' Derek, whoever said I was _going_ there? I'm staying right here and finishing my homework. Something that actually _matters_." She regrets it the moment she says it, but she doesn't try to backtrack because she's still trying to overcome the mortification of…well, whatever it is that'd just happened.

"I'm _dying_, Casey. Don't you understand that this is serious?" Says the most superficial male on the planet.

"Who said I wasn't being serious? I'm being perfectly serious. I'm always serious. It's just, you have this magical effect on me that makes me _enjoy_ it when you suffer."

There's an exasperated sigh on the other end and she entertains the possibility that maybe he's telling the truth, maybe he's really sick, maybe he's _not_ just trying to con her into walking into one of his juvenile pranks.

"Will you just shut up and come over?" That's _it_.

"Just who do you think you _are_, you…you-you degenerate! You can't just call me up and start passing out commands and expect me to fall into line and _obey_! I'm not your _dog_, I'm not your _girlfriend_, and I'm not here to _baby-sit_ you! I've got things of my own to do! Maybe, _MAYBE_, if you'd had the common decency to ASK me like a normal human being instead of just ordering me around I'd have _considered_ dropping by to check on you, but _now_?! NOW?! I'm—I'm! I'm…hanging up!"

"Goddammit, Casey!"

This time when he starts coughing he doesn't stop for a frighteningly long time. And once again, inexplicably, _she_ ends up feeling like the bad guy (how he does that she'll never know, but she hates it all the same). Mostly because he really does sound like he's in a bad way, but also because he just _cursed_ at her for the first time (and it feels like a physical blow; the pain is a dull contour throughout her body).

--_She takes an unplanned stroll down memory lane, and suddenly she's in the kitchen sharing a pint of ice cream with her mother, who has just commented that the lack of profanity in Derek's vocabulary is peculiar; everything else about his profile suggests that The Obscenities would be among his favorite speech categories, after all. And then the boy in question is sauntering past them with an air of nonchalance and ducking into the fridge,_

_"Smarti doesn't approve of naughty words, Nora." As if this explains everything._

_(And it does.)—_

"Please." And it's barely a whisper, but it's raw (though that's probably just the Sick talking) and (uncharacteristically) meek and earnest (but he's a very good liar –maybe the _best_), and _damn it all_, it shouldn't be this _easy_ for him to win when she's already declared that he'd _lost_.

But she's powerless to say no to a heartfelt entreaty for help (and he _knows_ it, the ruthlessly manipulative bastard, and she _knows_ he knows it), so, with a resigned sigh, she starts outlining The Rules (which he will doubtlessly break –thoroughly, _deliberately_—the moment she walks through the door, if he doesn't decide to disregard them altogether) for while she's over, chief among them the stipulation that he promptly –and unquestioningly—follow her every command, but she tacks on several addendums concerning her compensation for the visit, and he at least listens quietly (which she supposes could just be because his throat hurts too much to argue), so she (considerately) omits the Right to Arbitrarily Euthanize clause and assures him she'll be over soon.

"Hey, Case…" His voice is low, hoarse, and her abdomen tightens, "I just wanted to say…" She sucks in a breath. He's about to thank her? How positively unprecedented and unexpectedly…_nice_.

"Yes?"

"Make sure to pick up some Chicken Noodle soup and some apple juice, yeah?" This time she _does_ hang up, and Paul's pamphlets are no longer enough to prevent her from hurling the phone against the wall.

* * *

Still shaking her head at the sheer absurdity of having actually come here (on foot, from campus to grocery store to Derek's apartment –a good three and a half _miles_, and _why_ she's even bothering is entirely beyond her), she knocks on his door, fully expecting to be pelted by balloons filled with an assortment of staining liquids and shaving creams, or maybe tricked into a compromising situation (which would, naturally, be photographed and later used as blackmail material).

Instead, a little slip of a girl with blue eyes and carefully coiffed brown hair opens the door with a put-upon expression slicing across her pale face, and Casey takes her to be Derek's aforementioned 'doorman.' (Unfortunately, this girl's presence probably also means that he was _not_, in fact, kidding about holding 'auditions.')

_De-rek_, she mentally seethes.

"_You're_ next?" She's sizing Casey up with an offensively-appraising eye, and doesn't seem like she's pleased with what she sees. Casey has no idea what this means one way or the other (because she has no idea who this girl is, even if she _does _know why said girl is _here_), but she's affronted anyway. "'_Casey_,' right?" It's the way Amy used to say her name when she was dating Max. It makes her uncomfortable.

And also indignant.

"That's me." She answers cheerfully, and the tiny girl pulls the door further open with her as she steps to the side. "How's the patient?" The girl makes a sort of hissing noise between her teeth. Casey's brows furrow in bewilderment. She had not been aware that this sort of thing happened in real life.

"_You_ won't last long," Tiny Girl snarls, and then executes an impressively tight turn as she starts moving in the opposite direction, apparently intending Casey to follow. "And just so you know, he _prefers_ blondes."

Ummmmm.

Casey wants to say lots of things: that Derek's not worth sniping over, that really, underneath it all (what exceedingly little 'all' encompasses), he's almost certainly half-retarded and _definitely_ a jerk, that she can't see how him 'preferring blondes' helps the other girl's case, since _she's_ a brunette, too, and, perhaps most importantly, that she's outlasted _every _girl in Derek's life except the idiot's _mother_, but she opts to remain civilly silent on these matters. (Casey also decides not to mention the fact that she's Derek's _step-sister_, maybe dispel some of the girl's competitive contempt, for reasons she's choosing not to explore at present.)

Some few moments later, the girl vacates the premises (not without a few more choice put-downs), after showing her to the Incident Room (Derek waves placidly from his bed and she glowers at him) and the kitchen and the bathroom (as if she's never been here before, as if she doesn't know her way around his apartment as well as she knows her way around her own –and it strikes her belatedly that there's probably something disquieting about that).

"Hey there, sis." He says when they're (finally) alone, and she sees him set aside a spiral notebook with his familiar chicken scratch scrawled all over it. She wonders if he'd been using it to communicate with the Nurse Hopefuls in lieu of further abusing his clearly unhappy throat, and doesn't know what to make of the fact that he's actually willing to _speak_ to her despite the discomfort.

"_Step_-sis." She amends, and isn't sure why. Because hadn't _she_ been the one to establish that the 'step' thing was extraneous? That they were growing up? Moving past their Thing? (Their '_Thing_?' What the hell does that even _mean_?)

"Who was that?"

"Her name is classified information," (which means that he has no _idea_ what Tiny Girl's name is) "but I _can_ tell you that she was here on official business."

"Helping you write out your will?" She guesses, and drops her bag beside his bed. He coughs violently for several seconds in response.

"We _did_ have a brief discussion about my assets," he begins, and she almost wishes he would stop talking because he sounds just _awful_, "but I think she was more interested in what parts of my vast estate would be up for sale in the event that I kick the bucket. She wanted dibs on my jersey. And my boxers." Casey lifts a brow at this.

"Doesn't she care where those have _been_?" He tries to chuckle, but it only makes him start seizing again, so she doesn't elaborate. Instead, she leans over to rifle around in her pack and starts firing off questions. "So, Derek, what's wrong with you? Apart from the obvious, I mean."

"I'd ask what you meant by 'the obvious,' but in my weakened state I think I'd be too fragile to handle your answer."

"De-_rek_." She warns, finally coming up with the thermometer and her first-aid kit, which she has made certain is well-stocked with any and all medications this situation might call for. She throws a hand against her hip and glares down at him.

"Head, throat, body; you name it, it's failing."

"Not your stomach?" She gently rests the back of her hand against his forehead and has the immense pleasure of watching him trip over his words.

"Thiflub."

"What was that?" She lifts a brow in amusement.

"Stomach's fine." He asserts tersely, then appears to rally. "'Course, my stomach's a lot stronger than most peoples'." She giggles.

"It'd _have_ to be, to put up with all the puking you do. Speaking of which—"

"No, doc, no puking. No nausea. Check the boxes for the expulsion of a few of the other unpleasant bodily fluids, though." He grins winningly. She grimaces.

"_Ick_. I _hope_ that means you've been bleeding out of your skull." Casey senses that he's about to say something that violates several of The Rules she'd laid out on the phone beforehand, so she unceremoniously pops the thermometer into his mouth. "Shut it and hold still till it beeps." She instructs, and then pulls up one of his arms (which is as troublingly warm as the rest of him) to measure his pulse while they're waiting.

"Yes, mom." He says around the thin, plastic stick. She thwacks him against the head before she can stop herself.

"Shut up, moron." Then, after a moment, "And I'm not your _mother_." He gives her the most curiously intense look, and she cuts her gaze askance to the clock on the wall, willing herself to concentrate on counting his heartbeats. It takes the shrill bleeping of the thermometer to pull her out of the trance she hadn't even realized she'd fallen into in the first place.

"Whadd'ya say, doc?" He asks playfully, before another round of coughing erupts and pitches him forward until he's all but curled in on himself. It upsets her more than she can say to see him like this, and she doesn't think, she's just _there_, beside him on the bed, one hand at his shoulder and the other smoothing circles over his back until he finally quiets and starts drawing regular (if slightly wheezing) breaths again. Then he's slowly straightening, and she sees him opening his mouth to say something when he realizes abruptly (at the same time she does) how very _close_ they are. Her hand feels suddenly warm at his back; he's looking at her strangely and she's trying to convince herself that it's the peculiar, tremulous, inadvertently-caressing sensation of his breath (_germs germs germs_, she chants, panicked) against her cheek (they're _that close_) at fault for dragging her gaze irresistibly to his mouth—

"Derek," she hears herself saying, dimly, as if from far away, and then his mouth is setting into a hard line and he's pulling away (impossibly; because isn't the escape velocity at the event horizon supposed to be the speed of light? he can't be moving that quickly), and she crashes back to the present with a start.

"Am I gonna make it, McDonald?" (She feels the Distance snapping back into place between them. It's comfortable. It's _preferable_. She's glad of it. Most definitely. Without a doubt. _Nothing happened_.) She climbs off of the bed, peers down at the thermometer.

"Unfortunately, I'd say you're going to pull through." She shoots him a sardonic look. "Probably just the flu. You'll feel like crap for a few days, which I think is only fair considering you're an unbelievable jerk, but you'll eventually start feeling like your old, annoying self again." She pauses for a moment, pops a finger to her chin in mock-contemplation. "Unless you take an unexpected turn for the worse…"

"You're going to poison me, aren't you?"

"Left the arsenic back at my place, drat it all. But I'm sure I'll think of something. We McDonalds are an industrious bunch." She understands that the bantering has to keep going until one or the other of them decides it's okay to Proceed As Normal.

"If by 'industrious' you mean '_insane_,' then yeah, I totally agree." She glares.

"If all else fails, I suppose I _could_ just smother you with your pillow."

"How unsurprisingly unoriginal. You might _bore_ me to death before you even get the chance to _try_ to suffocate me." He yawns, starts coughing again (she does not approach this time, she waits it out like a good sister…_step_-sister).

"Ah, sweet, sweet karma." He recovers eventually and spares her an irritated look. She rummages around in the first-aid kit for a moment and produces a couple of heavily-packaged, wildly-colorful pills, which she sets on the table beside his bed. "Take these; they should help with the congestion, which should, in turn, help with the coughing, and then you can be obnoxious without interruption."

"I'm not obnoxious, Case. I'm _charming_." To really drive this point home, he closes off one nostril with his finger, tilts his head in her direction, and fires a ball of snot at her.

"De-_rek_! That's so _gross_!" He laughs. She wants to throttle him. "_Ugh_. You're an immature asshole and I'm going to make you some soup. If you do anything to my stuff, I'll castrate you with the can opener."

He makes some eloquent gargling noise, and she leaves him to make good on her soup promise. And pour him a drink. And set it all neatly on a little t.v. tray she discovers lying about in the living room. Which is a mess. But she is not his maid and does not attempt to clean anything up. (Well. She does tidy a _little_, but only because she's fairly certain that some of the things she's seeing are violating Health Codes that don't even _exist_.)

When she returns to his room, he's flipping through channels with the remote (someone had clearly dragged the television into his room for him to watch, a fact she has managed to somehow entirely overlook until now), looking really quite miserable on his tiny bed (probably all the talking has not been good for him), currently all but swallowed by his comforters. The bags underneath his eyes are also appealing. And so is the adorable snot river making a beeline for his upper lip.

"Aren't you just the picture of beauty."

"Blleeeeeh." He says.

"What're you watching?" She wonders idly as she advances, trying to ignore how Very Ragged he's become in the twenty or so minutes she'd been in other rooms of his apartment.

"Girls making out. You should try it sometime. It'd increase your market value." She stiffens and whips her head toward the television, sees the ice, the stick-wielding barbarians on skates, the hockey rink, and then shifts a fierce look back at the affectedly stoic boy on the bed.

"_Pig_." She murmurs, but decides to forgo the squabble. Just this once. "Up for soup?" He nods a pretty pathetic affirmative. (And _dammit_, she's not _equipped_ to be immune to this sort of wretchedness!) "Well, before you even suggest it, no, I will absolutely _not_ feed you, unless you're wanting it intravenously, in which case I'd be glad to hook up a make-shift IV in the form of this drinking straw." The tray appears in his lap and he beams a mucus-lined smile up at her. (And it is _not_ cute. Not even a smidge.)

Then he flicks a cursory glance down at the tray before directing his gaze back at her.

"Casey," he begins sweetly.

"Derek," is her automatic rejoinder, because it's in the Script. (She wonders if there's any other word she says quite so much as his _name_, and is quick to file that away under Abject Horror for consideration later, when she's in the privacy of her room, where she can quietly freak out.)

"This isn't Chicken Noodle soup."

"Sure it is."

"No, it's not. Chicken Noodle has _chicken_. And _noodles_. This is…" He (weakly) lifts the spoon out of the bowl and watches with a sort of detached interest as chunks of the soup gloop back down into the murky depths. "I'm going to guess semen." She feels her face heating and immediately averts her gaze because no _way_ is she going to dignify that with a response. Of any sort.

"Hm." She says.

"Casey…"

"_What_, you ungrateful bastard." And she really _is_ perturbed at how _effortlessly_ he seems to pull such coarse language (and behavior) out of her. It's irritating how natural it feels to rebuff his _Derek_-ness by adopting many of the same oafish, vulgar, insensitive mannerisms he regularly employs.

"Thanks."

(…what?)

"You're the most useful lunatic in the whole wide world."

He's wearing his orange juice. It suits him.

(Yes, she _knows_ he wanted apple juice. But that isn't what he got. )

* * *

Despite the rocky start, she stays with him for the rest of the day –if only because they'd agreed (or she'd _insisted_, anyway) on an hourly rate—during which he changes shirts (which involves a great deal of SHOCK and HORROR) because his old one was doused with orange juice, imperiously demands she retrieve a towel for him to clean his hair (she finds one in the dirty laundry), eats the Cream of Mushroom Soup, manfully suffers through her sporadic check-ups, complains interminably about the fluffiness (or lack thereof) of his pillow (she is happily oblivious to his predicament and does not offer to fluff it for him), and later asks if she'd like to watch a movie with him. _Only_ because she _really_ thinks that he should do as little talking as possible (even though he _won't shut up_), she doesn't argue the choice he makes (_The Godfather_, which she later refuses to admit to liking, even though she does –quite a bit, actually), and is even generous enough to lug the DVD player from the living room to his bedroom (though to be perfectly honest, the _hard_ part was hooking it up, which she had to with his increasingly frustrated instruction).

Toward the end of the film, Derek falls asleep (much to her relief; he was really beginning to look…frayed around the edges), and she resists the insane impulse to brush errant wisps of auburn hair out of his face, instead retrieving his dinner tray and returning it to its former abode, busying herself with washing the dishes she'd used…and maybe cleaning a bit more (only for lack and want of something to do).

Then she's back in his room, picking up her bag, and pointedly _Not_ watching him slumber (because it's _Not_ endearing in the slightest). She _especially_ doesn't sweep a hand across his heated forehead, but even if she _had_, it would've been purely to assess the status of his condition. (What other reason would there have been?) A minute or two later, she's flicking off his light and shutting the door softly behind her, and then she's off to his living room, where she reads until she falls asleep on the sofa.

She files The Mystery of the Spontaneously-Materializing Blanket (which she finds draped over her the following morning) under 'Unsolvable.'

* * *

There's something resembling Forward Movement in their relationship in this one-shot, methinks.

It's possible. But they are _notoriously_ thick-headed about this sort of stuff.

So, actually, probably not.

However!

Eventually, I'm going to force Derek to do something nice for _Casey_, instead of the other way around (which seems to be the trend thus far). Maybe that'll be the next fic...we'll see.

I'm also maybe-eventually going to have to figure out what the hell happened to Truman in this story ether, because I seem to have forgotten all about him (hey! maybe Casey has, too! that'd be awfully convenient...).

Also.

In case I haven't made it perfectly clear already: Michael Seater?

_Glorious_.


	5. midterms: schedule conflict

As promised, chums, here's the next chapter.

Some things you should know, also: THIS chapter is the first of four or five one-shots I have planned out to be part of a...series-within-a-series. The next few chapters are all going to be about Derek and Casey's Mid-term Study Adventures (inspired by the HELL of my last several weeks of college), and will be...sort of connected. But not really. I'll talk to my people and see what can be done to make it semi-coherent-slash-contiguous. (The next one-shot is actually already finished. I'm just planning to whore for reviews for a couple days 'til I post it. Cause I'm an evil bastard, obviously.)

After that, I've got a couple of one-shots (already completed) which are positively DRENCHED in angst. So prepare yourselves.

Meanwhile.

In the first installment of the midterm series: Casey comes over to Declare War. (And just in case it's not clear...Derek's got a friend named James over for shenanigans, who decides to stick around when Casey arrives. I suppose James is probably on the hockey team with Derek, but I didn't ask him to make sure.)

[If the gawd-dude were good, he would give to me a pony and the Sheldon Shlepper of unoriginal_elizabeth fame. But I don't have _either_. So. No on the owning LwD, too. *laments*]

* * *

_::in which Derek manages to both haggle and cock-block in one fell swoop::_

"Dude, some crazy, hot chick is here to see you." James (who _had_ been on his way out, but has apparently changed his mind, as he is in the process of pulling off his jacket again) reveals, and Derek knows immediately he's talking about Casey because he'd said 'crazy-_pause_-hot,' not 'crazy-hot.' (There _is_ a difference.) In his (vast, impressive) experience, most girls tended to be just one or the other.

Casey, unsurprisingly, is _not_ most girls. (She's hardly a 'girl' at all.)

"You didn't let her in, did you?" He asks urgently, affecting dread. Casey takes this as her cue to spontaneously appear, which she does with a wry, pursed smile aimed around the corner straight at him. "Klutzilla! Quick, hide the breakables before she has an episode!" He throws his arms dramatically around the plastic lamp beside the sofa, and she rolls her eyes.

"Cute, Derek," she says, like she actually thinks just the opposite, "but we don't have time for your antics." She punctuates this statement by depositing an unsettlingly large white board (ominously reminiscent of the Chore Board she and her mother had created Once Upon a Nightmare, not long after the McDonalds had first invaded the Venturi household –only this has even _more_ colors and arrows and utterly incomprehensible symbols, and that can_not_ be a good sign) right in front of his television set (even though he's fairly certain she knows that this violates one of his most important commandments: _Thou Shalt Not Block The T.V._).

"We don't?" She's been auditing the two classes of his they don't share for the past couple of weeks, and he's remained vigilantly silent about the matter, convinced that if he ever brought it up, Something Insane would doubtlessly befall him. He should have know that Casey's special brand of Crazy could not be crushed out of existence by merely ignoring it and hoping it'd get the message and go away on its own.

More importantly, he should have known she'd take his silence as tacit consent, and instead have tried to head her off by maliciously pranking her into backing down. Still, even if stopping her at this point is no longer feasible, even if he'd accidentally, unwittingly given her the go-ahead for whatever psychotic plans she has in store, that doesn't mean he can't at least try to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

(Operation: Eleventh-Hour Antagonism begins…_now_.)

"I unrespectfully disagree." He absolutely does not understand the huge smile that worms its way onto her face following this remark. He does, however, know to fear it. (Could it be that she already has a counter-attack planned?)

"_Dis_respectfully disagree, Derek. And I'm so glad you said that!" She claps her hands excitedly and he wonders if he should be backing away slowly.

"You are?" He says, playing helplessly right into her trap, because he's clearly lost control of this conversation (before he ever even _had_ it). It's a strange feeling, being so out of his depth. She is a cunning adversary, this McDonald woman.

"Yes! That is, after all, why I'm here." And then, in an eerily Vanna White-like manner, she indicates the board beside her. (How does he keep forgetting about that thing? It's practically a zoning violation.)

"…am I supposed to know what this monstrosity is?" He asks vaguely, after some time has passed. She looks at him like he's an idiot.

"It's our schedule, of course." He suspects she actually expects him to know what the hell that means.

"'_Our_' schedule." He repeats, slowly. "As in, belonging to the both of us." (Hadn't they made an agreement at some point that they were never to use That Pronoun?) She nods enthusiastically.

"Yep! It's only tentative, obviously," she laughs as though she believes it actually _is_ obvious, "because some subjects may take longer than others to study for, but I can make adjustments as we go along—" His eyes widen in horrified comprehension.

"_Stop_." He commands firmly, and she does, regarding him expectantly. "Hold it _right there_." He scoots forward on the sofa, expression hopefully reflecting the proper amounts of both disbelief and derision. "That…_thing_ is a _study_ schedule?"

"Duh. What else could it possibly be?"

"Uh-huh. What, exactly, are you imagining that _'we'_ are needing to study for?" He's pretty sure he already knows the answer to this question; he's just hoping that he'll wake up before she can give it to him.

"Mid-terms, Derek. You _are_ aware they're next week?"

"Yes, Casey. _Next week_. Not _this _week." He doesn't know why he expects her to hear reason when she's so obviously beyond the reach of sense or sanity. But he has to _try_.

"That's why we have to start _now_." She explains, confused. "Really, we should probably have started sooner, but I've been busy trying to get notes for the tests in your classes, so I just condensed some of the material—"

"Casey. I am _not_ going to be stuck –with _you_, no less—studying for a _week_." Why, oh why couldn't Santa have brought him a _normal_ step-sister?

"It's not a 'week,' Derek. It's only six days." (Is it even possible to miss the point so spectacularly?) "We don't start till tomorrow. I just came by for the preliminary informational meeting today. You know, to brief you on the schedule." He sighs heavily (and then blinks confusedly for a second or twelve –doesn't Casey own exclusive rights to that reaction?).

"_Why_ in the world would we need _six days_ to study?" She glibly, if not _very_ long-windedly, explains that the first four days will be devoted one-apiece to each of the four respective subjects they have to study for, that the fifth day is for 'contingencies' and the inevitable amount of time he's going to end up making them waste, and that the sixth day is for cumulative review and rest. Impressively, he thinks, he manages to keep himself from interrupting, and the moment she wraps up her explanation, he buries his face in his hands.

Then, very carefully (so she will have no room to misunderstand),

"Case, this is _not_ going to happen. I, Derek Venturi, am not going to spend six days of my life studying for a bunch of stupid tests, especially this early in my college career. You _do_ know I'm planning to coast through University 'til the NHL picks me up, don't you?" She huffs in frustration.

He feels a Speech coming on and braces himself.

"You can't just 'coast through' life, Derek! You have GOT to have a back-up plan! What if you get hurt? What will you have to fall back on? You've got to _prepare_ for life's unforeseeable circumstances! The future is NOW, Derek!" She shrills self-righteously, and _damn it_, he wishes she'd stop saying that. It's sickening, really, how easily it gets stuck in his head, lodging there and then looping incessantly until he starts _believing_ it.

"No, the _future_ is in a few seconds, when you kindly vacate the premises." He smiles cruelly at her and she ignores him completely.

"Besides –and as much as it _pains_ me to say it, you're the only one who can…I mean, I thought it'd sort of become…_routine_ or something back in high school. To study for the big tests together." Her fingers are teasing meekly along the lower hem of her top, but her eyes are trained resolutely on his, and something in his stomach _lurches_. Because, Casey? Almost-kind-of admitting to…_needing_ him?

(When the hell had he slipped into an alternate universe?)

"I'll do it." Comes a voice from his left, and when he glances over he realizes he'd forgotten entirely that James is still here. The other boy is staring at Casey with this half-glazed expression, transfixed (for no reason Derek will attempt to guess at, since James has just had a first-hand account of how _insane_ this girl is), and he is suddenly, puzzlingly livid (and he's not even sure he has cause to be, but REALLY, how can this moron not _see_ that Casey is _out of her mind_?). "I mean, if D doesn't want to, I'm free this week, and we're still taking core classes, so we probably have a few that're the same, and, you know, I'm…I'm free this week."

Derek makes up his mind in the instant that James starts repeating himself.

(Because it's Sam all over again, and if he doesn't head this off then she'll be working her way through his friends and then on to more and more popular guys until she's at the top of the food chain with _him_, and _that_ is simply not something he is willing to sanction. And, anyway, don't _any_ of his friends understand the sanctity of the Male Code? It's like none of them have ever even _heard_ of it. It's absolutely ridiculous.)

"Four days." He says grimly, leveling a heavy gaze at her. He thinks James might be frowning at him, but he doesn't check to see.

"Five and a half." She makes a face that's somewhere between a grin and a glower.

"Five, and we break for hockey games."

"Done." She says immediately, before he can amend the terms any further. Then, smirking broadly, she picks up her massive board (with some effort), nods at him stiffly, and turns politely to the other boy. "Nice to have met you, James." With a wide smile that appears to incapacitate his friend.

She leaves without a word of parting to him, and he doesn't try to stop her (he's _happy_ to have her gone –freaking _finally_).

James retrieves his jacket and sends Derek a caustic glare.

"Dude, you are an _asshole_."

After James departs, Derek stretches languidly and, with the sort of pure contentment afforded only to the truly diabolical, he leans back into the couch with a deep sigh of satisfaction and starts channel-surfing.

* * *

Woooooooo! (Did I even MENTION the step-sibling issue in this chapter? UNPRECEDENTED!)

Mmmmmmm, banana bread. You make me sooooo happyyyyyyyy.


	6. midterms: condensation catastrophe

I was gonna wait a few more days before I posted this, but I'm (unexpectedly) going outta town for a little while and won't have another opportunity to put it up 'til I get back, so...why not? (Thanks for the lovely reviews thus far, though. ^_^)

This is the second one-shot in the 'mid-terms' continuum, and another one from Casey's POV. It references an earlier chapter, wherein it was established that she's got a job at the library. Everything else pretty much speaks for itself, I'd say.

Anydoodle.

Off I go, into the dark wilderness of...er...Oregon. Which isn't so much dark as badass and beeeyuuuuteeful.

[I...am an alcoholic.

...I mean. I don't own LwD. Man, I feel so much better now that that's off my chest.]

* * *

_::in which there are death threats aplenty::_

The rationale for beginning Phase One in the library is three-fold: first (for the obvious reason), they'll have the most direct access to any supplemental materials they might need which are (potentially) unavailable on the web; secondly, it's a (hopefully) _quiet_ place to work, which will (hopefully) discourage Derek from being himself (i.e. an incorrigible, noisy, obnoxious idiot) and actually-maybe _get to work_ (a girl can dream); and finally, they do actually have to _study _a bit before the whole 'question-and-Derek-(wrong)-answer-followed-by-Casey-(correct)-answer' process can get underway, which makes the library (for the all of the aforementioned reasons) the ideal place to get started.

The most important part of this logic, however, is the fact that the locale is supposed to keep him from bothering her while _she's_ trying to work. She's got information to absorb, freak out about not having memorized verbatim, copy down thoroughly and at remarkable length onto note cards, cull out and consolidate the extraneous in favor of the useful and pertinent, organize by subject, difficulty, and priority (as well as can be determined), and she can't imagine getting through all of that with a Venturi doing everything in his (annoyingly proficient) power to destroy her focus.

For now, though, he actually appears to be concentrating (or at least he's making a very good show of it), so she's being especially careful to hold all comments to the effect of being enormously impressed that he's able to keep his huge, gaping hole of a mouth _shut_ for longer than six seconds at a time to herself so as not to jinx or ruin the sanctity of the moment—

"Casey," he whispers urgently, and leans into her space even though he's already sitting right beside her, "Hey, Casey." She pulls a hand to her forehead, sighs meaningfully, and makes an honest effort to ignore him (even though she _knows_ that ignoring hyperactive children only makes them more eager to get your attention than before), but then he's _really _invading her personal space because his mouth is at her ear and "_Casey_," glides over the shell and sends little shocks of (purely startled) frisson humming through her body. In knee-jerk response, she recoils, eyes wide before she remembers there's a cue card for this sort of event, swallows the fluttering, quivering Thing lodged in her throat, and glowers at him.

"_What_?" She growls acerbically, and he just smirks (the cretin).

"How much you wanna bet I could get both those girls' numbers," he waggles his eyebrows suggestively in the direction of the girls in question, "in less than three minutes?" She rolls her eyes. It just _figures_ that the only person capable of allaying the pre-test Freak Outs is this five-year-old imbecile.

"I don't know, Derek. Though I think it should be at least as much as we bet on how long it's going to take me to _stab you to death_ with my ballpoint pen." Casey's always somewhat taken aback at herself for the death threats (she's not sure where or when they started, but she does know _why_), but she takes comfort in the fact that (thus far) they only ever seem to manifest when she's dealing with _him_ (and eight or nine times with Truman, but she likes to think that extenuating circumstances exonerate her of blame). It does still alarm her that she actually _contemplates_ the threatened homicide when instead of looking intimidated he seems patronizingly pleased.

"I think the more interesting bet there would be whether it's the ink poisoning or the actual stab wounds that finally do me in." She forgets to be unnerved by Proximity to the Enemy and pastes on the most fearsome expression she has in her arsenal as she inclines her face toward him (dangerously).

(She does _not_ notice that his eyes are almost hazel in this light.)

"De-_rek_, we are _here_ to _study_. So _get to work_ before I _break your jaw_." To his credit, it does look like he _tries_ to stifle the laugh. She glares Murder at him.

From behind one of the nearby stacks, apparently summoned by the Outrage of a Rule Being Broken, one of her supervisors emerges and makes an "_ahem_"-ing noise that cuts through the otherwise silent library like a knife. He lifts a finger stiffly, crossly to his pursed lips to call for Quiet, Or Else. She is mortified and Derek (_eventually_) contains himself, and Mr. King slips back between the rows of books with a final warning glance.

"Derek, I swear—" He scowls up at her and makes a shushing sound.

"_Casey_," He whispers abrasively, and she blinks at him rapidly in confusion. "Be _quiet_, this is a _library_ and we've got _work to do_." He makes a face at her like he simply _cannot believe_ that she'd be so unmindful, and as he's bending his head back over his textbook she considers seriously smashing his face against the table.

* * *

It's almost a full ten minutes before he says anything else, _just_ long enough for her to have convinced herself that he'd either fallen into a deep trance or learned somehow to sleep with his eyes open, so it's this false sense of security he interrupts when a tiny, paper projectile beans her in the temple. She concentrates on etching Impending Apocalypse into her expression as she turns to regard him. He appears impervious.

"Case, what's a 'coupe day-tot?'" She violently suppresses the excitement that tries to bubble to the fore at the notion that he's actually been _studying_. Clearly, this is a trick. A ploy. A _scheme_.

"That's '_coup d'etat_,' Derek." She begins, cautious. "And usually, it means that the military is mobilizing to overthrow whatever government is currently in place to replace it with another, in their opinion 'better' government. Like Napoleon at the end of the French Revolution –remember, from high school?" He looks like maybe he does. It's both disturbing and comical. Then he looks at her squarely.

"Well, there ya' go. Thought that was a weird year for that model." She stares at him and can't decide whether to be worried or annoyed.

"You thought it was a _car_? Do 'context clues' mean nothing to you?"

"I wouldn't say _nothing_, necessarily. But pretty close."

"I have to know, Derek. Is this sort of stupidity something you're born with, or is it something you've had to refine over the years?" He beams. Because apparently he's screwing with her.

She elbows him in the side.

* * *

It's been so long since he last did anything that she's almost completely forgotten he's there until he nudges her shoulder with his own.

She's automatically turning to reprimand him for the interruption, but by the time she faces him he looks so intensely absorbed by the book laid out before him that she decides to remain silent in the (highly unlikely) event that it was just an absent bump in the midst of his perusal.

No sooner has she started taking notes again that he nudges her.

"_De-rek!_"

* * *

He heralds his return from the restroom by tousling her hair with a hand she is _certain_ he will not have bothered to wash. Before she can shrink away in disgust, however, the hand slides to her shoulder and he leans down until his cheek is right beside hers. She catches her breath somewhere in the vicinity of her pancreas and thinks that's a very strange place for it to have been.

"Case, there're some very unkind things written about you on the bathroom wall." He confides seriously.

"What? How can that be? I don't even _know_ any boys here yet—" He's biting his lower lip _just so_ and it finally dawns on her. "_De-REK_!" She whisper-shrieks, and tries to club him with her tiny mechanical pencil, but he dodges at the last second, laughing quietly when he drops himself back into the seat beside her. "You didn't really write anything about me, did you?" She's concerned since she does, after all, _work here_. What if his libel is something obscene and horrifying and one of her bosses sees it and she gets _fired_? Where will she find work this late into the semester? How will she buy food?

Oh, god, she's going to _starve_!

"Don't worry, Case. It's nothing serious. I just made very brief mention of a certain pair of Care Bear underpants—" He doesn't get to finish the sentence because she attempts to kill him halfway through it. Then something dreadful occurs to her.

"…wait. How do _you_ even _know_ about those?" He drops her gaze for a moment and his expression loses its humor for half a second.

"I _have _done your laundry a few times." He reflects. She narrows her eyes at him. "Well, okay, so I've removed your laundry plenty of times to replace it with mine, at the very least. Let's just say that it was a freak accident that led me to discover the…glittery article in question, and I thought I should share my trauma with others, maybe soften the impact of the psychological damage." Fumingly, she tries to keep herself under control, turning back to her notes before she does something that she'll regret later. (No, wait. Scratch that. Before she does something that will probably be noisy enough to get her expelled from the library.)

"You are _such _a…a…_jerk_." She settles for finally, because the alternative is too horrible to be uttered in public (and she does have her reputation to consider).

"Yes, well, mommy-dearest always used to say nice guys finish last. I'm only taking the lesson to heart."

"Your mother would never say something like that." She asserts, scowling.

"Yeah? You're probably right. You know her _way better_ than I do—"

"Your mother married _George_, remember? He's one of the nicest guys I know. Maybe a little odd, which explains Edwin, I guess, but very sweet. Which is how I _know_ she wouldn't ever give you such idiotic advice." He's got an oddly sober cast to his face when she glances over at him. "Wha…what?"

"You're forgetting the part where she _divorced_ my dad, Case." She feels immediately sick to her stomach because this conversation has spiraled out of control for no reason at all and this is really none of her business and does he _have_ to make her feel terrible about _everything_ that she says? Doesn't he realize she was only trying to defend his parents' integrity?

More importantly, doesn't he _know_ he's not allowed to look like such a wounded puppy in her presence? Her sympathies are not HERE for HIM, damn it!

She is repentant despite herself and tries to find some way to recover.

"I…Derek…I'm sorry for—" And this is (of course) when he starts laughing at her. Her mouth falls open in shock.

"Oh! Oh, you should have seen the look on your _face_!" He's got a hand pressed to his stomach, as if it's all simply too much and he's doing everything in his power to contain himself. She might have slapped him if she weren't so very busy feeling hurt and embarrassed and angry with herself for buying into his 'serious' facade. (Hadn't she learned early on, after the party he'd conned her into helping him take credit for throwing, that a sincerely Somber-Serious Derek Venturi does not _exist_? Doesn't she _know_ by now that he has the emotional depth of a _trashcan_?)

(Except.)

_Something_ is there, in the way his mirth lasts several beats longer than it should, in the curiously tense set of his shoulders, and she knows, she _knows_ (and she's not even sure how, but this does little to diminish her surety) that the moment, short-lived and baffling and inadvertent though it may have been, had provided an unintentional glimpse into a confidential aspect of his character that he swears (all-too-convincingly, by frequent and witting demonstration) up and down he simply does not have. It had been an evanescent lapse of raw, scarcely defined _feeling_, and _she_ had been privy to it.

(She hates the tiny thrill that courses through her, abhors how very much like intimate privilege it feels.)

She knows, too, that when she simply rolls her eyes at him and grumblingly murmurs a command to get back to work (instead of lecturing him or arguing with him or attempting to break his face or responding in any of the myriad ways that, under these circumstances, would have qualified as _normal_), that _he_ knows what she has (accidentally) perceived, and she's terrified for one stomach-churning moment, because she has no idea what it means or if it changes anything or _how he's going to react_—

"You're not the boss of _me_, McDonald," he says, mock-wrathfully, and then, after he tosses quick, covert glances at the other library patrons arrayed around them and discerns that all heads are safely bowed and paying him no mind whatsoever, he tucks one hand under his arm and abruptly rips his elbow down, which produces a thunderously grotesque displacement of air, and all those heads are popping up suddenly to look at them and— "Awww, jeez, Casey! _That _is _disgusting_!" He holds his nose and waves his opposite hand as if to push offensive vapors away from him.

(_Moment_? WHAT _moment_?)

"DE-REK!"

* * *

It's been almost five minutes since he started laughing (uproariously), and thus far there's no sign that he intends to let up anytime in the near future. _He_ thinks it's _hysterical_ they've been kicked out of the library (her workplace, her second home, her _sanctuary_).

"Stop _laughing_, Derek! This _isn't_ funny!" She stamps her foot peevishly and tries to shove him into the wall. Instead, _she_ nearly trips into it when he dances neatly out of the way –'nearly' because, right about the time her face should be meeting plaster, someone jerks her roughly backwards, stabilizing her with (large, warm) hands at either side of her waist. "Thank—" (that someone turns out to be _Derek_) "_you_! Get your hands _off_ of me, you horrible, stupid, evil _moron_!" He releases her post-haste, a ridiculously broad, despicably smug grin slathered onto his big, stupid head as he steps away from her. "Do you have any idea what you've DONE?"

Oh, the consternation, the _disappointment_ on Mr. King's face! HOW will she ever live this humiliation down? She'll never be able to show her face in public ever again! She might as well drop out of school now and save herself the shame—

"Chillz, Case. We'll just head to your place a little earlier than intended. You can make me a sandwich. No worries." She feels something twinge forebodingly at her temple and thinks it might be a blood vessel rupturing.

"'_No worries_?' We just got _kicked out of the library_! Where we spent the past _four hours_ not accomplishing anything because of YOUR disruptions! Did you get _any_ work done _at all_?" She bellows, no longer concerned with keeping her voice down. (The damage has already been done, anyway. What's the use in keeping up appearances anymore?) He looks offended.

"I'm shocked, Casey. Have I _ever_ let you down?" She must look awfully stupid, she thinks, gaping at him like a fish. But how in the world is she supposed to _answer_ that question? "I made a good deal of progress in there, I'll have you know." He says, stuffily, and she narrows her eyes suspiciously and demands proof.

Without hesitation, he pulls a legal pad out of his backpack and flips through a few pages before he hands it to her. Scrawled across the top is something that might be a rudimentary attempt at imitating letters, which appears to have been forsaken rather early in the endeavor in favor of the tyrannosaurs drawn beneath it, munching amiably on the head of a stick figure with swirly eyes and a highly-schematized tongue lolling out its mouth (with '_Casey_' stenciled in his crude handwriting directly below the figure's stick-feet).

"Derek." She says serenely, knuckles whitening where she grasps the notepad.

"Casey." He replies pleasantly.

"You do realize that I'm going to _murder_ you." He stares at her thoughtfully for a moment.

"We should get something to eat first. I'm _starving_."

(Phase One is…_not_ a success.)

* * *

If you cannot spare the time to leave a review, at the very least buy me a cup of coffee.

(Pleeeeeeeeease --my coffee budget has been positively SLASHED lately by the recession. The recession has TAKEN MY COFFEE.)


	7. lunch time

This is NOT the next chapter in the mid-terms story line. (alas!) This had initially been slotted as Chapter One of _USteps_, actually, but I never posted it because I just kept..._cringing_ everytime I looked at it. It's rife with (horribly one-dimensional) OCs, cliche situations, and generally poor plot construction. I didn't like it very much (still don't, actually), but I think I've finally gotten it to a point where it's no longer the rollicking tragedy it began its life as, so...while I'm working out the kinks of the next mid-terms chapter, I'll go ahead and leave this on yer doorsteps (and maybe-probably) eventually move this up to the first chapter, displacing all the other chaps in the process (oi, that's gonna take _forever -_maybe I'll just stuff Reese's Pieces into my face, instead).

Enjoy! (But if you don't, I promise that's alright. This chapter is just...silly.)

[i sacrificed a goat for the rights to LwD. satan has yet to ring me back. the prick.]

* * *

_::in which Derek invades Poland::_

"And just _who_ exactly said it would be okay for you to eat here?" She's scandalized (and definitely upset, and maybe a little panicked) when he throws himself onto the bench beside her.

"I did." He tells her, point-blank. The glare she sends him does not have the desired effect of searing through his flesh. "Invited myself just a few minutes ago. It was pretty out-of-the-blue, and believe me, I was _just_ as shocked to be asked as you apparently are at seeing me here."

"De-_rek_! This," she gestures expansively, "this is where _I'm_ going to be eating lunch from now on." He nods once, eyebrows raised, as if to say, 'yes, Casey, I can see that. _Aaaaand_?' She scowls blackly, in a reciprocally silent manner, hoping to convey something along the lines of, 'leave now before I am forced to _kill_ you.' In response he fights to stifle a grin. "Would you like to know why I _chose_ this spot?" She opens, since he doesn't appear to be Getting the Message.

"If I say 'no,' you're gonna tell me anyway, aren't you?" She lifts her chin primly.

"_This spot,_" she begins, "is well-shaded and out-of-the-way and therefore _quiet_," she glares at him pointedly, "but it's not _so_ isolated as to receive no foot traffic whatsoever. Also, it's very close to the vending machines and only a couple minutes' walk from the cafeteria. _Furthermore_," she says firmly, when it looks like he might be about to interrupt, "it's got that roofed patio over there in case of inclement weather, and it's got optimum seating for a _small_, _close_ group of friends to enjoy a relaxing meal. But do you know the _best feature_ of this spot?"

"Comes with central heating?" He guesses, flippant. She ignores him so as not to be impelled to end her step-brother's life _half a day_ into her _first day_ at university. (That's what he _wants_ her to do, that's what he's _expecting_, knowing full well she'd have to go on the lamb and sacrifice her scholastic dreams in order to escape justice, and she would not _dare_ to give him the satisfaction.)

"It's a _Derek-Free Zone_." She stares at him meaningfully. He blinks at her owlishly. "Do we have an understanding?" She resists the impulse to stab him when he rolls his eyes.

"Sure, sure, everything the light touches, forbidden territory. I think I've seen this movie somewhere before…" She purses her lips to show him what she thinks of his stupid attempt at humor. "I get it, you crazy person. This land has been claimed in the name of Casey." He gives her a mock-salute and drops his elbows against the table.

After a moment, wherein he gives no indication that he's about to remove himself, she crosses her arms and starts impatiently tapping at her bicep with a finger.

"Well?" She finally prompts, making a vague motion with her arm that's supposed to make him understand he should be _leaving_ now.

"'Well' what?" He wonders, as if the entire conversation had never happened at all. And then, while she gapes at him in stupefaction, he steals half of her sandwich, taking a chunk out of it while he affectedly checks his watch for the time. She knows it's healthier to _visualize_ dismembering him, as opposed to actually entertaining the idea, so she just breathes for a moment, collecting herself. Then she moves on to the bigger, more important issue.

"Come _on_, Derek! There's an entire _campus_ worth of places for you to eat! _Away_ from me."

"What if I want to eat here?" He rips another sizeable bite out of her sandwich.

"_I_ was here FIRST!" She's well aware she sounds petulant. (She's hoping he won't notice.)

"A compelling argument," he cocks his head to the side, considering, then slants her a sardonic look, "if we were _five_." (_Damn it_.)

"De-_rek_!"

"_Casey_!" Comes a shrill hail from the other side of the table. Derek and Casey both start and look up at the same time, apparently in astonishment. "Are you two gonna argue all day, or Casey, are you gonna introduce us to the…very charming young man?" (She knows from the facsimile expressions of interest she finds smeared onto each of the other girls' faces that this's the Beginning of the End for all three of them. But what can she _do_ about it? It's too late now that they've actually _seen_ him –that's all it ever seems to take, one quick glance and it's off to Spellbound City…)

"'_Charming?_'" Is the only thing that registers at first, however. His smile is _huge_, and he directs it away from her, at what are likely his Soon-to-be-Victims. She starts constructing a case in her mind for justifiable homicide. (_'It was to save self-respecting women EVERYWHERE,__'_ she hears herself pleading.)

"I'm—" He starts, and she interposes with,

"_This_," she indicates dismissively, "is _Derek_."

"Pleasure's all mine, ladies." He's pulling the Head-Inclined, One-Brow-Lifted, Half-Smirking Maneuver, and she watches in dismay as all three of them fall for it hook, line- "Casey didn't tell me she'd made such _striking_ friends." –and sinker.

She sighs in hopeless exasperation.

"Derek," she starts on the left and works her way right, "this is Julia, Romy, and Alex. I met them today in _our_ English class. You'd have met them, too, if you'd _bothered to show up_." Alex breezes right through the latter part of Casey's statement, flipping long, blonde hair over her shoulder as she sizes him up.

"So," she starts, with an Alluring Gaze, "this is the brother we've heard so much about?"

"Step-brother," they chime in unison, and then shoot glares at each other, the both of them failing entirely to be perturbed at the disturbing information that these three strangers have 'heard so much about him' in the mere hour that's lapsed since they'd met.

"In stereo, even." Alex chuckles, and Casey doesn't know why it bothers her that the other girl's laughter rings so pleasantly, that it has a definitively mellifluous, infectious quality to it. "Is this something you guys do at parties?" She takes a calculated sip from her drink, green eyes honed on Derek.

"In the event that Casey would ever be cool enough to be _invited_ to a party?" _Of course_ Derek is returning the interest. She's _blonde_, she's got _green eyes_, she's _beautiful_ (and Casey has no idea why she wants to yell at her that she's just an analogue, a dim reminder of a girl he maybe-possibly once cared about, a shade, a shadow, a _nobody_)—"Abso_lute_ly not. If you stick around long enough, though, you'll find that she's not entirely without entertainment value." Casey nibbles on a carrot irately while Romy scoots closer to Alex on the other side of the table and smiles at him in what is probably supposed to be a seductive manner. (It's useless, at this point, to try to defend herself against his maligning. She's been here before: Derek is the only thing they can see.)

"So, Derek," Romy oozes, fluttering her eyelashes (obviously), "d'you have a last name, or are we just going to have to suffer in agonizing mystery?" It's Casey rolling her eyes this time, as she tears into another carrot.

"I make an effort not to let a pretty lady suffer," he says, and it _sounds_ heartfelt even though Casey knows it's total bullshi—"and the name's Venturi." He slides Romy a slow wink that makes the smile melt right off of her face, which she then replaces with a wobbly, watery version half an instant later in a poor attempt to save face. Casey massacres her apple wedges.

"Derek _Venturi_?" Alex exclaims suddenly, clapping her hands together excitedly and squealing at the precisely the same moment as Romy. (Oh, great. _More_ girls to add to his harem of floozies. And _damn it_, these three had seemed so promisingly self-aware! What _is_ it about this moron that turns sensible girls to mush?) "Casey, why didn't you _tell_ us your brother was THE Derek Venturi?" She startles, shocked to be (re-)included in the conversation.

"Yeah, Casey, why didn't you tell them I was _the_ Derek Venturi?" He's wearing a smug grin and she wonders if she can fit her fist through it.

"Because his ego's already self-sustaining. There's no need to _encourage_ it." Peripherally, she catches Alex raising a brow and Romy readying herself to defend the boy she'd met all of twelve seconds ago, when Julia speaks softly,

"Should I…should I know who you are?" She stage-whispers meekly, averting her eyes when Romy passes her an incredulous look. (Bless this clueless girl.) Casey is heartened; perhaps at least _one_ of them still has potential.

"He's _Derek Venturi_!" Romy says by way of explanation.

"Star Center Forward for our hockey team! He's the whole reason we've got a chance of making Nationals this year." Alex contributes, and even though Casey thinks this assertion is absurd, she keeps the sentiment faithfully to herself while Derek begins regaling them with Stunning Feats of his achievements, liberally hyperbolizing and generously embellishing at whim.

Julia nods along fervently all the while, clueless but evidently eager to learn, and Casey gives her up for hopeless when she starts plying him (albeit shyly) for information about his 'hobbies' and his 'hopes and dreams.' Casey would very much have enjoyed volunteering his Snow Bum aspirations, but she has the feeling this information would hardly be received well, and she'd rather not _already_ have enemies, even if by now it's clear that she won't be able to keep these girls as friends, either, what with Derek being who he is and all (an Enemy of Women), and the likelihood of him wooing them in five-seconds-flat and then moving on to the next (non-)challenge being what _it_ is (inevitable).

She _would_ try to warn them, if she thought it would do any good. Or, more specifically, if she thought any one of them might actually _listen_ to her.

While she's ruminating on the various ways she might permanently maim and injure her step-brother, she takes an absent bite out of the plum (which, along with the apples) she'd packed for dessert (having surrendered the rest of her lunch to a Ravenous Jerk, who shall remain nameless) and finds herself caught off-guard by its sweetness; her eyes flutter closed of their own volition and for a moment she quietly savors the mouth-watering, sugary-sweet succulence –until an inadvertent trill of indulgent delight escapes her, a quavering, unseemly sound she hopeshopeshopes has gone unnoticed in light of Derek Events, but she cracks her eyes open cautiously to make sure all the same. A quick sweep reveals that none of the girls appear to have heard her (Romy and Alex are animatedly explaining some hockey concept or other to Julia), and she heaves an internal sigh of relief –until she realizes –with a start—that Derek is staring at her. He's got a strange expression on his face, guarded, maybe, or pensive, she's not quite certain, but his eyes are definitely focused somewhere in the vicinity of her mouth. Her heart picks up a quicker tempo (in _alarm_, obviously) as he continues his suddenly intense study of…of…she isn't sure. But it can't be good.

His gaze flicks right, toward the trio of girls across from them, and in the following instant it's bouncing straight back to her, and before she knows what's happening, his thumb is sweeping neatly across her lower lip, smearing through a residual bit of plum juice. It's gone a microsecond later, and then he's pushing that same thumb through his teeth and closing his lips around it, and suddenly she's warm all over.

(It's probably –_hopefully_—just the initial phase of swine flu, she thinks frantically.)

She wants to ask him what the hell THAT was all about –he can't just go around putting his fingers all over peoples' MOUTHS without warning or permission or tact or-or WARNING! People could have _heart conditions_, and he could at least TRY to be considerate of the fact that such thoughtless action might exacerbate said conditions and send some poor, unsuspecting soul into _cardiac arrest_!

But he's already turned away from her, apparently no longer interested in her or her plums or her curious new heart malady, and he doesn't speak to –or even so much as _look at_—her for the rest of the lunch break.

He _does_, however, ask Alex out within half a minute of his bewildering transgression, with a sly comment to the effect of there being 'plenty of him to go around' when Romy and Julia both look Pitifully Dejected.

(the _whore_.)

* * *

After he openly ignores her edict (the one in which she had forbidden him to eat lunch anywhere near her) and shows up for the sixth time (in a row. as in, consecutively. as in, one-day-short-of-a-week-_long_. and, okay, she gets it: Derek is _still_ going to be in her life, but _really_. they hadn't even made it a full _day_!), she decides to just start making him lunch. (If for no other reason than to deter him from stealing hers.)

Still, it's peculiar and confusing and slightly upsetting that he just tacitly accepts it the first time she gives it to him –he doesn't say 'thank you' (not that she'd really been expecting him to), but he doesn't seem surprised, either, not even a little.

There's her,

"Here, Derek, you parasite." When she hears him call over her shoulder to the (only remaining) friend (of the original three he has yet to date-and-dump) with whom she'd been in the middle of a conversation (which, apparently, is over now that he's arrived, since Julia is no longer capable of speaking. stupid Derek.), greeting her over-affably by 'Jeanie.'

And there's his,

"Hey, food!" Because food is the center of his universe, and he's invariably excited to see it (even when it _rightfully belongs_ to someone else. maybe even _especially _when it belongs to someone else. the bastard). He snatches it immediately out of her grasp and plunks down next to her at the table, very much in her space (his knee knocks deliberately, agitatingly, _infuriatingly_ against hers while he pretends to be totally unaware of her. AGAIN. the jerk.), and eagerly tears through the bag to get at the eatables within.

There's even his,

"This'd better not be good for me." Complete with Suspicious-Warning Glance, but then that's the end of it. He turns the charm up to full-blast and starts in on Julia, his knee still _knock-knock-knocking_ against hers (which, for the record, is INFURATING. if he doesn't stop soon she's thinking about trying to gouge out his eyes with her spork. the _toddler_), and maybe ten seconds later he's asking her out, and that's just…it. Nothing more. Nada.

Is it possible he's been _expecting _this turn of events? That he figured it'd be _inevitable_ she'd _buckle_ and start making him lunch? Had he just won some game she hadn't been aware they'd been playing? Did he think she was somehow sponsoring his slime behaviors, that she was silently endorsing his now-daily intrusions and quietly acceding to being deliberately ignored while he flirted with all of her new friends and thereby systematically _destroyed_ all hopes of her _having_ friends in the first place?

He couldn't just keep coming over here with his…his eyes! And his hair! And his smile! He was _usurping_ all of her friends! How could she make any social progress here if he kept sabotaging all of her efforts to foster meaningful relationships?

And DAMN IT. She has had it with this _knee_ thing!

She shoves him, _hard_, and is then genuinely surprised when he goes crashing dramatically to the ground.

"_De-rek_!" She says, and she's worried the interjection sounds more concerned than scornful. He's slow to get up, clearly milking this for all it's worth. Casey rolls her eyes. And then starts when she realizes that Julia is looking at her, aghast. Julia doesn't know Derek the way she does (-that came out wrong-), and Casey knows immediately that the other girl has assumed the worst. (The worst being that she's apparently lost her mind and is now suddenly and spontaneously shoving people to the ground.)

"How could you _do_ that, Casey? What was that even _for_?" She splutters while Julia jumps to her feet and rushes –also rather dramatically—to Derek's side, still looking at her like she's appalled and also slightly alarmed. So, of course, Julia misses Derek's Conniving Smile. (the _charlatan_!)

"Derek! He-he's faking!" She points at him wildly, but by the time Julia's gaze pans back to Derek he's already reverted back to Pitifully Injured.

"He _faked_ you pushing him to the ground? Casey, what on earth is wrong with you?" Casey goes into Desperation Mode.

"He—the _sandwiches_! He didn't even care! I will not be manipulated! He's trying to steal you away from me! He only wants to date you to SPITE me! Don't trust him! He's EVIL! AND, and…and the _knee_ thing! He was doing the-the-the _knocking_!"

Uh oh. That hadn't come out nearly the way she'd meant it. (She supposes, anyway; she doesn't really know because she'd flashed white with panic and just started vomiting words. But since both Derek _and_ Julia are now giving her twin expressions of alarm, it probably hadn't been pretty. He was taking _another_ one of the few friends she'd been able to make and she was probably looking an awful lot like a lunatic at this point and it was _all his fault_! The VILLAIN!)

"Is she _always_ like this?" Julia asks Derek warily, as if she's no longer there. Derek's eyes widen considerably.

"You have _no_ idea." He confides Very Seriously, and allows himself to be led away by Julia, who flashes her one final look of consternation, shock, and disappointment before she turns away. (Which is, incidentally, the moment Derek grins _hugely_ over his shoulder at her. The reprobate.)

Casey _fumes_ for the rest of the day and vows she's never going to have anything more to do with him.

* * *

She's up very late that evening, though, studying for a quiz, and forgets not to pack a lunch for him on her way out the next morning.

(Two months later, it's routine.)

* * *

Much love to you, chums. ^_^


	8. midterms: procrastination pitfalls

So...this was gonna be a mega-shot consisting of three or four tiny to Very Long one-shots, but most of it ended up on the cutting room floor in the editing process. The only ones that survived were this one and the chapter immediately following it.

The good news is, we're only one chapter away from finishing up this midterms business (thank GOD -even FICTIONAL midterms are giving me a headache), and also that Derek and Casey are both thoroughly inebriated in our next and final installment (bahahaha) of the mini-series.

This chappie is probably more filler than anything else, featuring Derek's procrastination prowess in action! And also a pair of glasses which spontaneously magic themselves into existence and make a cameo appearance. (Another one-shot introducing them didn't make the cut much earlier in the story.)

-this story now edited (includes: karate-chop ACTION). many thanks to arbitraryink, who pointed out that (I'm a tard with a degree in Idiot) hockey has 'periods' and not 'quarters,' which you might think I should know since I _watch_ hockey (woo Canucks!), but you would again be over-estimating my intelligence. also thanks for the Dean's List confirmation. you rock and such.-

[i'm planning to sleep my way to ownership of the rights to LwD. i'm looking at you, Jeffie-poo. *wink wink*]

* * *

_::in which Derek's persistence pays off...and also backfires::_

He's dumb-founded when she stops talking at _precisely _6:58, magically produces the remote from underneath mountains of paper, flicks the television on to game channel, and then settles quietly onto the sofa beside him with a textbook, a pen and a note card, and her I-pod. He doesn't _say_ anything, because the only things he knows how to say to her are antagonistic, and he doesn't want her to start badgering him now. (Because, _hello_, the game's about to be on.)

Without a word, she fits her headphones into her ears and props her chin against her fist as she leans over the book and starts absorbing information while he tries earnestly to figure out what the hell sort of prank this is. Of course he'd been intending to switch the game on in a couple minutes himself, but he'd also expected to have to _fight_ her in some way to let him watch it (prior agreement or no), and then, after his hard-won, begrudging victory (as there's no doubt in his mind he'd have won –some things are just inevitable), he'd have had to suffer through her aggravated sighs and murderous glaring and periodic, irritated attempts to get him back on task. But this…this…'letting him have his way' business? Very unsettling.

Still, he's not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (if nothing else, he can turn a profit when he has the creature made into glue), so he devotes himself as determinedly to the game as she seems to be doing with her studying.

…except that, ten or fifteen minutes later, even with the game in full-swing, he realizes that somehow the idea of an unharassed Casey just doesn't sit right with him, so for the pure novelty of it, he reaches over and flicks a bud out of her ear, feeling mildly disheartened when she only shoots him a half-hearted glare and pops it right back in. Frowning at this discomfitingly _normal _response, he makes another attempt to rattle her some few moments later, after his hand has crawled gradually, furtively into position. Then, with his eyes caged vigilantly forward, pretending deliberate, focused concentration on the television screen, he drags a finger along the sole of her foot, _just so_.

She looks up in alarm just as he's (unhurriedly) tucking the offending hand into the crook of his arm. But after several more seconds of what his periphery is indicating is an especially Weird Look, she simply pulls her feet up underneath her and gets back to work.

Damn woman. This refusing to be annoyed thing she's got going on is turning out to be extremely annoying.

He watches the game (distractedly) for a little while, trying to figure out some way to get her to react in a satisfactorily outraged and/or insane manner until, at some point between the first and second period, she slips on that (damn) pair of glasses he'd wondered for some time if he'd ever get to see again (after he'd teased her mercilessly when she'd first worn them, near the beginning of the semester), and he finds himself suddenly and mysteriously unable to leave her alone.

He balls up pieces of paper and throws them at her (which she obstinately ignores), tries to doodle on her ankle (until she stealthily grabs the pen away from him) tugs occasionally at her hair (until she secures it into a loose bun with the pen she'd taken from him), and even attempts to give her a wet-willy (which she deflects by way of nimbly snatching his finger out of the air and then, leisurely, absently, without even looking up at him, bending it backwards until it very nearly _breaks_).

When, well into the second period, she still declines to respond to his screwing around –when, in fact, she finally gets frustrated enough with him and vacates the couch in favor of the kitchen, he waits what he figures to be a suitable amount of time (three minutes) before he flicks off the tv (_mid_-_game_, because all this studying has clearly pushed him over the edge) and follows her.

It's morbidly gratifying that she's conspicuously peeved the instant his foot crosses the threshold separating the living room from the kitchen.

"Ah, my favorite sister," he grins widely, inexplicably cheerful, and plods past her toward the coffee pot.

"Step-sister," she amends automatically, "and why are you in here annoying me when you've got a game to watch? Can't you see I've got studying to do?" He grabs a fresh pair of cups in (deliberately) direct violation of her instructions to re-use the same cups to cut down on the work they'll have to do later (honestly, he's planning on conning _her_ into doing all the dishes, anyway, so he decides it doesn't really matter one way or the other).

"Game's over." He lies swiftly, setting the cups on the counter while she spins on the tall stool to steal a glance at the clock above the sink. Then she slants him a disbelieving eyebrow. (Really, her lack of trust is hurtful.) He's got a stirring piece of fiction immediately at the ready nonetheless (Lord of the Lies, people, remember?), "The Wings' coach had some sort of a stroke or something, so the game's been postponed. 'S definitely over for the night, though." Lying is like breathing for him (although the lying is, ultimately, _much_ more satisfying), so he's not surprised at all when he turns around, two freshly-poured cups of coffee in hand, to see she's already accepted his fib as truth. He mentally smiles as he sets one of the cups at her elbow.

Derek watches her blow exactly six times over the rim before she finally takes a sip, peering coolly up at him as she does so. He averts his gaze as her eyes fall shut to savor it, however, because the image of her rapture is…unpleasant.

"What're you gonna do when we're not taking the same classes anymore?" She asks him suddenly, and he shrugs, deciding it's safe to look at her again.

"Easy. I'll just get _very_ good at cheating." Her glare is baleful.

"De-_rek_," she begins, and he holds up his hands.

"Chillz, Case. I'm kidding, of course." He takes a sip of his own coffee. It burns his tongue, but there's no way he's letting Casey know that, so he manfully swallows his way past the scalding pain of a million-million taste buds, screaming as they die in agony. "I will, however, be paying some lucky Keener kid to take my tests for me."

"De-_rek_!"

"Joking, joking." He moves, at last, away from the counter to sit beside her.

"No, you're not." She (shrewdly) perceives. He grins.

"No, I'm not. But that's not even the best part." He turns to her, excited.

"What? You gonna steal this poor kid's lunches, too?"

"Don't be silly, Case. That's what I've got _you_ for." He gives her an affable pat on the cheek and is positively delighted when she threatens to end his life. "No, actually, you'll be thrilled to learn I've decided I'm going to make the Dean's List." He takes a smug (though cautious) sip of his coffee. "Derek Venturi, academic role model _and_ star hockey forward – a legend before his time, an inspiration, a—"

"Fake, a fraud, an irritating idiot?" He watches fondly as her eyes burn with the holy flame of self-righteous indignation. What would he _do_ (for entertainment) without this crazy, crazy girl? "Please, _please_ tell me you're not serious. Please say this's just another one of your bad jokes and you're not actually going to sully such a prestigious academic honor by _cheating_ your way into receiving it."

"…no?"

"De-rek!" And then she does this…this _thing_ (and now he knows where Smarti learned it) where she's pouting and her eyes are all big and her hands are pulled up to her chest like she's some sort of pathetic, unloved puppy, and it is absolutely, unquestionably ridiculous-looking.

But, shockingly, it appears to be _working_. Unaccountably, he finds himself half an instant away from admitting he's only messing with her, and he has to look away from her completely to reclaim control over the mind he has clearly lost. (Honestly: what the _hell_?)

"It…it means that much to you?" Is _still_ the only thing he's able to manage on the spot, hoping it'll buy him time to come up with something better if he just has a few more seconds to _think_ while he's not under the influence of…of her _witchcraft_.

"Of course it does!" Peripherally, he sees her drop the Pitiful Puppy act, and much to his eternal relief, his brain promptly clicks back on. "_I'm_ going to make the Dean's List. I don't want our parents to think they're giving the distinction out to just anyone." Then, stiffly, when it occurs to her that maybe this comment hasn't cast her in the best light, "Plus, it's…it's something you have to _earn_!" He leans back and angles his chin onto the heel of his palm, wrapping his ankles (for counterbalance) around the legs of her stool, his bare toes brushing absently against hers.

"Well, actually, I hadn't _really_ been planning on making the List –I mean, _think_ of what it'd do to my rep! Not to mention the fact I'd be setting some sort of…standard," he shudders for effect, "for expectations from the 'rents, and who wants that?" She lays the tips of her fingers against her chest and breathes out in relief. "Now I know it's such a big deal to you, of course, despite the rep-damage, I really don't see I've got any choice but to make it, but you have only yourself to blame for that."

(Explosion in three, two…)

"Derek! No one benefits from cheating! It's immoral! Even for _you_! It's wrong! And _illegal_! If you're ever caught you'd be a criminal! And worse –you'd probably be _expelled_!" He doesn't know where the mad urge to slide his foot up along the slender line of her calf comes from –only that she'd been the one to encourage it by (unconsciously) shifting closer. He runs through a brief list of justifications for the compulsion and decides that if he'd done it, she'd probably have tumbled (comically) to the floor in shock. Which would've been both cruel and hilarious and also potentially painful. (And maybe that's reason enough to _still_ be considering doing it.)

"Chill out, step-sib; who said anything about _cheating_?"

"_You_ did, idiot." He rolls his eyes, amused.

"Details." Derek waves off her cross expression, "I'm doing this fair and square, I promise. And," he adds after a moment, "_you're_ going to help me do it."

"Absolutely not." She declines, almost before he finishes.

"Wanna bet?" His voice drops several octaves for no particular reason at all, and…and he really _hates_ those glasses. Makes her look like a damned school teacher. Hair pulled too-tight, chin lifted primly, full, round mouth sourly pursed—

"Oh, come on. I know better than to bet with you by now. It's simply _not_ going to happen, and that's that."

"Oh, yeah?" He slowly unwinds his ankles and yields her space exclusively to her. (Apparently, his mind cannot be trusted in such close quarters for any length of time.)

"Yeah." She says haughtily, and then he shrugs noncommittally and drags her textbook to a place on the island better suited for sharing.

"Oh well, then." He takes another pull from his coffee mug and starts purposefully scanning the page. "Back to work I guess." Casey splutters before eventually, confusedly relenting, finally losing herself in the task of knowledge-osmosis (one of her favorite pastimes).

It takes her a full ten minutes to realize that this _is_ helping him.

"Hey!"

* * *

Pitiful Puppy act happily brought to you by canon! I swiped it from the 'Make No Prom-ises' episode, after Casey and Max traipse into the McDonald-Venturi homestead following several hours of unsuccessful pink prom dress shopping. Max is begging off his duties as boyfriend until Casey pulls the puppy-ploy, which was so utterly adorable I _had_ to use it (on Derek)eventually. Glad I finally got to. ^_^

MEANWHILE.

In the next chapter: drunk!shenanigans. I've been struggling for a while now with how to end this next chapter (because how do you resolve such a convenient set-up WITHOUT the sexitiemz?), but I think I'm nearing something satisfactory.

And then...after that? Angstacy.

As always, reviews are a marvelous motivational tool, and I love you all.

Back to marathoning _Scrubs_ (again).


	9. midterms: maths madness

I am mere hours away from posting the next chapter (just gotta proof-read and probably kill myself once or twice from embarrassment), but here's this Meaningless Drabble while you wait.

* * *

"I've gotta say, Derek, I'm impressed by how utterly and completely and consistently _wrong_ you are."

"What can I say? It's a gift."

"Didn't you learn _anything_ in math the past twelve years' worth of school?"

"Of course I did, Case. Look, I know what this is." He flips up the textbook and indicates a stylized '_f_'' on the page with his pen, wrapped in parenthesis.

"Really." She says, with (only just a bit of) skepticism. "What is it, then?" Honestly, it's as if she doesn't _believe_ him.

"It's the letter 'f,' Casey. _Moron_." He says, in Casey Tone, and her head thuds against the table in exasperation.

* * *

(For those of you haven't reached Algebra yet, (f) means 'function' and has something or other to do with graphs. It's been a long while since I had to care about such a thing, so for a full explanation, consult...er...the Internets, I suppose.)

Love and potatoes! ^_^


	10. midterms: katzenjammer kids

At long last! I'm FINISHED. (victory is so mine.) This one-shot ate my brain. There are like...four different versions of it, and this is the only one that didn't end in Porn. (I'll probably try to make something of the other versions eventually, because who doesn't like the sexitiemz?)

Anydiddle.

Thanks for the patience, loves, and the many, many, _many_ spectacular reviews. Lots of you have commented on every chapter, constructively and faithfully (WLS, Chica, Frogster, fire, Pennie, shangri-la, mayfair, and on and on and on), and I LOVE YOU GUYS LIKE BURNING.

*ahem*

I'm gonna Get On With It Already and shuffle off to do something (un)important and (un)productive.

Warnings: UST leaking out of pores, gratuitous tickling, slips galore (of the Freudian variety), unabashed drunkination, etc.

[must i really make this (depressing) declaration every chapter? need i remind everyone (including myself) that i DON'T own Michael or his Sex Eyes or his Swishy Hair or his...his VOICE...? *weeps*]

* * *

_::in which alcohol is -not for the first time- an excellently convenient plot device::_

Derek doesn't think she's been sleeping much in between all the studying they've been doing. There's no way to confirm this, of course, and he doubts she'd admit it to him if he asked (not that he ever would, lest she mistakenly assume he _cares_), but he has his suspicions all the same.

"—but that's the _third one in a row_ I got wrong! What am I goinna do if I totally space when it comes time to take the test? What sort of future am I going to have if I can't even…if I can't even pass my _freshman midterms_! What's that gonna mean for the rest of my university career? How am I ever going to get an internship with these sorts of grades? I'll…I'll be _lucky_ to be a foot doctor!"

This, in addition to the fact that she's been generally twitchy and shaking like a Parkinson's patient for almost a day now, in between downing more coffee and candy and energy drinks (and the occasional packet of Pure Cane Sugar) than he was aware a single person could ingest without undergoing some sort of nervous breakdown.

He's beginning to worry, in this state, that her (many, _many_) death threats may eventually become _attempts_.

Luckily, he has a Plan.

* * *

"Derek," she mumbles dreamily, her face scrunched up thoughtfully, and doesn't wait for the answering echo of her name, "I think I'm drunk." She rolls him a Suspicious Glance (or at least he suspects that's what it's supposed to be –he's in no position to judge one way or the other, but he's familiar enough with that particular tone of voice to know it's usually accompanied by a Suspicious Glance) that takes a few seconds to finally settle into place. "Did you make me drunk?"

He considers his answer carefully, wading through a bothersome amount of unhelpful, inebriation-inspired comments which keep popping around in his head like so many jumping beans, needing only the slightest push to go tumbling gracelessly out of his mouth (things like: 'why are your legs so long?' and 'why is your hair so shiny?' and even, 'just out of curiosity, what is the Canadian policy on incest?').

"That depends," he wonders if he can make the world stop spinning if he closes his eyes. (Nope. If anything, that makes it _worse_.)

"It can't 'depend.'" She says forcefully, and then makes a strange face, like maybe there's logic behind why that's true, but she's having a difficult time puzzling out what that logic might be. Which is fine with him, actually, since he's having a difficult time keeping track of which direction the floor is. "You either did or you didn't."

"In that case, then." He squints to see if that helps his perspective issues at all. It does, a little. "No." He has trouble discerning the expression on her face (what with the squinting and all), but he has reason to believe she's glaring at him.

"I don't _believe_ you." She says, rather sourly, and he hears her crossing her arms (yes, he _hears_ it; the alcohol has apparently given him supersonic auditory powers –it's either that or he just knows Casey so well he can practically act out her part in all of this, and he's not sure he's comfortable with that scenario).

"Laudable desirability." He burbles eloquently, and then cracks one eye open all the way to see her furrowing her brows at him.

"_What_?"

"Plausible deniability." He amends, and thinks that sounds more right than whatever it was he'd said before. (He's having a _lot_ of trouble keeping track of this conversation, and the really irritating thing is that it's more funny than it is irritating.)

"You don't even know what that _means_." She sounds quite sure of this, and he spares a thought to marvel insanely at how shapely her toes are.

"Doesn't mean I don't have it." He decides to stand. It does interesting swirly-type things to most of the shapes and colors in the room. (It doesn't affect his image of Casey, however, who is even now as he realizes it standing up right beside him, gazing mistrustfully at the unlabeled beverage in her grasp.) He wants to challenge her to prove him wrong, maybe watch her trip and stumble her way into his kitchen, but she's close enough he can smell the pineapple of her lip gloss, and he loses his train of thought.

Feeling the sudden need to defend himself (when he finds himself bafflingly unable to drag his gaze away from her lips-eyes-chest),

"Do you have no idea about how many times I hafta tell people I'm not _dating_ you?" He glares at her critically. "I am _not_ dating you, Casey."

"I know that, Derek." She says, clearly humoring him, because she's still intensely focused on the bottle in her hand.

"I don't even _like_ you." She frowns indignantly up at him and sways a little on her feet. Almost unconsciously, he wraps a loose arm around her and plants a hand at the base of her spine to steady her.

"You're not my favorite person either, ya know."

"Why don't they _believe_ me?" He asks her pleadingly. And then, unbidden, "Do you know they have a _pool_?" Her mouth juts into a soft pout and he's not sure why it suddenly occurs to him that life is simply Not Fair.

"Who has a pool?" But he's already moved on, primarily because there's _no way_ he's going to let her know that most of his hockey team has a running wager concerning when he and Casey will 'finally just have sex already.' Granted, he's yet to set them straight on the whole step-sibling issue (or even so much as bring it up), but the very _idea_ that he and Casey would ever…would ever…

(No. _Never_.)

"_Talk _about lobbable definability." Just as he's considering that that probably hadn't come out quite the way he'd intended, she starts giggling, really _giggling_, and as she tips left, his other arms snaps out automatically to brace her at the shoulder –'automatically' because most of his mental faculties are currently occupied memorizing the bewildering sound of pure merriment coming from…from Casey. (Now currently in his arms.)

(They are definitely drunk.)

"Plausible deniability, you retard." She's still smiling when she finally looks at him again, and when she cocks her head experimentally to one side, the entire planet tilts in that direction and balance quickly becomes an issue. With the twinkle of epiphany shining in her (horrible, awful, no-good-very-bad) eyes and a devilish smirk (that he knows spells Impending Doom) cutting across her face, she leans right precariously, toward the sofa, and he careens powerlessly where she's steered him, releasing her at the last second so as not to pull her down with him (the last thing he needs right now is to be _wearing_ his sister).

(Script Edit: _Step_-sister.)

He regrets the decision immediately, though, when she tucks her hands against her stomach and starts laughing at him. (The witch.)

"I…" She staggers, catches herself with a wide, goofy grin. He doesn't appreciate how much she appears to be enjoying herself at his expense. "I think _you're_ drunk, too."

"_I_ don't get drunk." He lies, because it pleases him to do so. "Certainly not on _chick_ liquor." He adds as a reflective afterthought, inadvertently focused on a sliver of skin peeking at him from where her tiny shirt has ridden up (and her sweatpants have ridden _down_).

"A-_HA_!" She crows in triumph, startling his gaze guiltily away from where it'd been mere seconds away from being permanently glued. "I _knew_ there was alcohol in these things!" Casey reels slightly as she wields her empty bottle at him, and he watches her in amusement as she flailingly recovers herself. Then she throws him an accusatory glare. "That means you _did_ get me shrunk!" He has absolutely no chance of stopping the goofy grin that curls his lips. Her glare develops a sinister aspect. "_Why_ did you get me drunk?" He blinks innocently up at her.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." He maintains, and thinks he might try to stand again in a moment if the room will just stay _still_ for five seconds.

"De-_rek_!"

(Cue: Out-of-Body Experience sequence.)

When he was five or six or seven (sometime before his voice dropped to its current Raspy-Sex-God timbre and girls became fascinating in ways beyond their mysterious cootie infestations), his mother had taken him to an outdoor market to see how saltwater taffy was made. Derek remembers standing before the towering machine, hypnotically transfixed as two long, thin, spinning robot arms pulled huge, thick gobs of the stuff in opposing directions at –what seemed to him to be—the precise instant they met in the middle to fold the candy back over itself.

This memory comes slamming back to him in this moment because, as Casey's voice cracks his name into halves (in his new Bose Inebriation-Enhanced Surround Sound), his mind requires an appropriate visual to explain the way his stomach suddenly feels. He imagines the taffy must've been suffering similar turmoil. (He starts mentally ticking off the name of every deity he knows, sending up short, desperate prayers that this unfriendly stirring is wholly and completely the fault of the liquor.)

"You're paranoid. And delusional. And loud." Furthermore, "Why in the world would I want to get _you_ drunk? It was bad enough when there was just _one_ of you." (Is he even making sense anymore?)

"I…_what_?" (Apparently not.) In hindsight, she probably can't tell he's seeing three of her. In irritatingly perfect detail.

"Don't say like that to me. Look at me. Like that. To me." He shakes his head and concentrates very, _very_ hard. "You've been awake for like, three days straight. You've probably just…finally cracked or something."

Oh, look. The highly anticipated sequel to the Suspicious Glance: _Menacing Skepticism_.

"I have _not_ been awake for four days."

"Three, Case."

"_Three_ days, then." She corrects, unflinching at the eyebrow he lifts in her general direction. "I sleep." She asserts with a sort of wibbling conviction, and then proceeds to exhibit every tell for deception in The Book. (Someday, he's going to learn this girl to tell a proper lie.)

"Even if that were true," he begins, carefully, "which it isn't, that doesn't eliminate the possibility that you've been moving steadily toward full-blown Crazy since you were born, which you most definitely have." He's pretty sure that'd all been coherent. (The mental applause for this stunning feat is deafening.)

"_You_ weren't even _there_ when I was born! You're not my _real brother_." She slurs, rather non-sequitur (Casey has clearly been at the mind probe again, slipping strange words into his vocabulary while he slumbers) and off-topic, in his opinion.

"…what?" He fumbles, trying to follow her. (Had she just completely skipped over the whole part where he'd called her 'crazy?' Weren't they focusing on the _wrong_ issue? _Why_ must all three of her have such _blue_ eyes?) "Obviously I'm not your 'real brother.' Us, sharing bodily fluids?" There has to've been another way to phrase that question, he thinks; a way that doesn't involve all the air in the room heating uncomfortably. (Foot, meet mouth. You are going to be fast friends, most definitely.) "Gross." He finally croaks, and wonders impatiently why the couch won't just get to swallowing him already.

"Disgusting." Her echo of agreement comes several, several beats after he expects it, and just as the alcohol is preparing to manufacture some creative explanations for the obnoxious 'WHY?' banging around in his skull, she starts yelling again. "Stop changing the subject!"

"_What_ subject?" He demands in frustration, genuinely lost. Why can't she just stick with _one topic_ _at a time_? Is it really so difficult?

"I'm not crazy!" (Aaaaaand now, he has whiplash.)

"Says the crazy, shrieking person." She stomps her foot in what looks to be Nuclear Frustration.

"YOU got me _drunk_! I am NOT crazy! I –WE are _underage_!" Saying it out loud seems to make the realization real for her. "Oh, GOD! Derek, we're _criminals_! We're going to _jail_!" She regards him anxiously. "We can't take our midterms in JAIL!"

"Case—"

"WHY must you always do such horrible things? Why must you sabotage _everything_! Like my…my birthdays! And my proms! And my love life!" (…what?) "And my…_life _life! Why are you so…_evil_?" He's not totally certain anymore, but he's pretty sure all this hysteria is the opposite of what he'd been going for when he'd decided to get her drunk. "And why do _I_ always end up paying for _your_ stupidity! How do I _always_ get pulled down with you!"

Casey punctuates this accusation-inquiry by losing her balance, clumsily smashing her knee against the couch frame and then –bodily—smacking into him. (Emphasis on 'smacking' –her hands, held out instinctively to catch herself, slap into his face as she collapses into a sprawl on top of him.)

"_Ouch_!" His own hand flies to his right eye, where she'd accidentally struck him. "Case, what the _hell_—" Then (of course, because what good is injury without mortifying insult?) she's scrambling to sit up in his lap, thighs wrapping loosely around him, knees locking into the sofa cushions behind him, and it takes him one long, senseless moment to realize she's frantically apologizing (amidst comforting avowals that 'even if he deserved it, she still didn't mean it—'), horror speeding her breath and widening her eyes while her fingers wreak cool, tentative havoc at his jaw and cheeks.

And then, several seconds later, he remembers, oh yeah, he's in a bit of pain here, and Casey's fingers (good intentioned though they may be in the aftermath of their bout of violence) flying into his eyeball would hardly be therapeutic, so he clamps the afflicted eye shut and reaches up to wrap his hands around her small wrists, pulling them slowly back and down into her lap, holding them there when she tries to lift them again.

"I'd prefer to keep that eye, Klutzilla." He teases, and starts blinking experimentally. She watches him in silence while he adjusts (to the dimming pain in his eye, as well as the feeling of a Casey melding so perfectly against him). Then, at long last, when he's on the verge of Something-That-Definitely-Isn't-Panic, trying to decide what he's (NOT) going to do when she starts to shuffle off of him (not that he _wants_ her there –he _doesn't_),

"I _hate_ it when you call me that." She says, subdued. Her hands rotate smoothly in his, and her fingers splay delicately against his abdomen (which tightens painfully in response).

"Well, that _is _why it's funny…" She glowers unthreateningly at him. Then she smiles softly. (And good _god_, this girl and her mood swings!)

"I'm sorry I hit you in the face." She reiterates, and then starts laughing again, at least attempting restraint before she gives up and falls against him, shaking with mirth. If this wasn't all so very surreal (to the point where he's having to consider seriously the possibility that he's slipped into an alcohol-induced coma and is simply having a horribly disturbing nightmare), he figures he'd probably be dissolving into hysterics right along with her. "But it felt…" She pauses to take a couple of deep, trembling breaths, "_really good_."

"I will have my revenge." He vows dangerously, but she just squirms playfully in his lap and jabs him in the stomach. He jerks involuntarily in surprise, and suddenly Casey's got a maniacal gleam in her eyes to match the smirk curling its way across her lips.

"Awww…is Der-bear mad?" She leans forward and his fingers tense convulsively around her wrists. "Poor, _poor_ Der-bear." Whisper-soft, her lips brush over the shell of his ear (-what the hell is she _doing_?-), and the slow burn that begins in his belly flares suddenly into his brain and renders him incapable of speech.

(Is the air…_throbbing_?)

Almost unconsciously, he feels his grip relaxing where he holds her, and then he's just improvising, moving where the sleepy persuasion of the alcohol bids him, sliding over thin arms and curling under elbows, making the jump from arms to hips in one smooth leap, and if he falters, suddenly unsteady when his palm encounters the same bare flesh he'd been eyeing earlier, it's only because an important synapse has been detonated in his brain.

After that, his mind makes the decision to detach itself from the moment, lingering nearby only to make casual observations about the slow, heavy quality of the world; the way time stretches and curls its toes, in no hurry allow him to move past the (horrifying) brush of sharp, tingling _awareness _that accompanies exploding nerve endings when his fingers carve soft, shallow valleys into the skin of her hip and her own hands roll into fists against his stomach.

And he has no idea where this is going or why (his mind is still just _there_, on the sidelines, watching things play out, showing discouragingly low interest), but he wants to touch more of her, so he does. (Magically, the room stops spinning.) His heart is slamming so hard in his chest that his _fingertips_ have a pulse, and he feels his stomach muscles knot and tighten (with something familiarly primal and frighteningly dark) as his hands pull up along her sides, gliding over lean curves and displacing fabric and—

—his pants are starting to chafe.

(Oh, fucking _damn it_.)

"_Casey_," he bites out, trying really, _really_ hard to care about the fact that there's probably nothing okay about what's happening here.

Luckily, as it turns out, a smashed Casey is not the most brilliant or perceptive Casey, and her response (following with merciful haste in the wake of his…budding development) is to retaliate to what she takes as an innocuous assault:

"_I'm_ not the ticklish one here, Venturi." She gifts him with a devious grin (which lasts long enough for his brain to pop back into his head with a frantic cry of alarm) and a sinister chuckle (which sets the room to twirling again), and then (oh-dear-god-no-no-NO) she's tickling him.

It's _nothing_ like being tied to a chair by a twelve-year-old and torture-tickled by Smarti; at least there he could _pretend_ control over himself, at least there he'd had the presence of mind to attempt some semblance of dignity, at least there his sister had actually been his _sister _–but _now_? Now _Derek's_ the one giggling uncontrollably, and Casey's fingers are dancing clumsily –albeit with aggravating effectiveness—over his ribs, skittering over his abs, sweeping down, across his stomach and tripping over his belt while he spasms beneath her, helpless and completely at her mercy. He feels himself collapsing sideways, clawing at the arm of the sofa to try to escape the onslaught, but she only follows him over, legs fastening around his hips while his gut clenches with laughter and something else entirely; something wilder and harder to define or resist –_something _which must be immediately and violently smothered, his mind urges, through the thick fog of inebriation.

So he launches his counter-attack, flailing and twisting until his superior weight tumbles them over the lip of the sofa and onto the floor, where they land hard enough to steal the breath from both of them. Derek recovers first and retrieves Casey's wrists, dropping his weight slowly until her hands are trapped between them, and after that he's just breathing heavily against her, waiting.

(What for…? He's got no idea.)

Eventually, she recuperates, and then they're just a couple of drunk people staring at each other on the floor (except they're not: they're Derek and Casey and their parents are _married_), and he keeps waiting for the _wrongness_ to settle in and send him rocketing away from her, but it…it _doesn't_, and what the hell is he supposed to do with _that_? How—

Casey leans up and buries her nose in his neck.

"When was the last time you _bathed_, Derek?" There is a brief –though intense—battle waged in his mind that ends with him closing his eyes and trying to imagine that the (very warm and soft) person beneath him is…well, anyone other than who it actually is.

"I'm tellin' you, Case, the ladies prefer my natural aroma."

"I think you're confusing _aroma_ with _stench_."

"Same difference." He says, and doesn't open his eyes to see if she's picked up on the meaning he'd accidentally packed into the statement. They pop open on their own, anyway, when she starts wriggling against him, and before he knows what's happening, she's tucked snugly into him, murmuring something mostly unintelligible (although he _thinks_ she mentions something about 'vengeance for drunkinating') while her eyes drift shut and her breathing gradually evens out. Maybe fifteen seconds after this brand new inexplicable turn of events (one of the very, very many that've taken place this evening), she's snoring softly, leaving him lying there, curled around her, wondering what the hell is wrong with his head and vowing earnestly to _never_ touch alcohol _ever again_.

Derek doesn't recall making any sort of conscious decision to fall asleep in this unspeakable position (in fact, he's fairly sure he meant to Evacuate Immediately), but there's something (morbidly) fascinating about watching Casey sleeping (because who knew this lunatic girl actually ever _rested_?) beside him, and the gentle rhythm pulls him under before he has the chance to stop it.

* * *

Derek wakes to three separate (and equally worrying) horrors the next morning: first, someone has apparently taken a sledgehammer to his skull (because even _breathing_ makes his head throb painfully); secondly, he doesn't remember a _damn thing_ about the night before (though he has the distinct impression, distressingly, that he's probably forgotten Something Important); and finally…he's so tightly-fitted against Casey he may as well be a _part _of her.

Panicking, doing his best to ignore the Massive Hangover merrily driving ice picks into his brain, he slowly, carefully disentangles himself and stands, breathing hard, assessing the state of their clothing (all still there –thank _god_), clenching and unclenching his fists while he tries desperately to remember if he'd said, done, or even so much as _thought_ anything last night that he might need to now go vomit over.

While he paces (and tries to ignore the way the sunlight slanting through the blinds is making his eyeballs throb), Casey makes a small noise at his feet, and (because these are just the sorts of thoughts she inspires) he immediately considers snapping a photograph of her drooling for blackmail material –or better, finding some way to rudely awaken her. Ultimately, he decides his head hurts too damn much for such an effort, and moreover, that his head hurts too damn much to remain conscious and terrified over events that may or may not have actually transpired last night, so he abandons the Scene of the Crime in favor of his bed down the hall.

He does first lift her onto the sofa and find something to cover her with, however. (This doesn't count as effort. She weighs like, two pounds.)

* * *

I know plenty well what it's like to _be _this drunk (motor skills FAIL, speech and vocabulary FAIL, curious, rambling, jabbering-mad thoughts...), but writing about it sober was an…interesting exercise.

The point is, trying to string together a coherent story while both of the protaganists were totally knackered was awfully difficult. 'S why it took me so long, probably, and even now I'm not sure it's entirely comprehensible...oh, well.

ALSO. Just a note: I actually did (half-a-minute's worth of) research and discovered that the legal drinking age in Ontario is 19. I'm pretty sure they're both 18 at this point, but if that's inaccurate...well. Oops.

AND! This is officially the last of the mid-terms continuum.

NEXT TIME! The one-shot I was writing (and trying to wrangle into cooperating) when I got frustrated and then drunk and churned out 'Head Case.' You'll probably be able to tell where I drew the inspiration for that fic. ^_-

And now. I am le tired.

I'm going out for more coffee.


	11. hockey harrassment

Don't have too much to say about this chapter; it's kinda...weird. But this is my first real attempt at angst-ficcage (for this fandom), so I hope you'll all be a lil' lenient wiff me. Preeeeze?

*ahem*

Once again, many wildly exuberant thankings for the feedback, chums. It's kinda ridiculous how awesome you guys are at this business. (Thanks for the marathon-reviews, pips. ^_-)

Warnings: I stereotyped the shyeet outta the Russian Hockey Player OC I threw into the mix, so sorry for that. Also, you should probably be warned that this chapter is drivel. And not proof-read. Eh.

[i have officially watched the whole series FOUR TIMES. i'd say this qualifies me for at least a meagre share of the rights to the show. daphne? jeffie? pretty please?]

* * *

_::in which Derek and Casey receive matching head wounds::_

There's absolutely no preamble, not a hint of warning, she just smashes through the doors like she has every right and reason in the world to be there, though, admittedly, at first he doesn't mind so much because he figures he's probably just delirious from his injuries (he _is, _however, somewhat alarmed at the subject matter of his hallucination), as this is clearly the only explanation for seeing her here, since she doesn't _come_ to his hockey games. Since she isn't _invited_. Because she's Bad Luck. And distracting. (To his teammates, obviously. They all try very hard to impress her and invariably end up making fools of themselves. It is extremely aggravating.)

"Where is he?" She demands of the first boy to approach her (_Max_, his mind supplies through the dull haze of pain, and he's puzzled when the thought makes him queasy), shifting the poor kid a dangerous look before she casts her sharp gaze outward, sweeping the locker room for all of half an instant before her eyes zero in on him (no, he doesn't know how; maybe she's got ESP or something), even though three of his wings have formed a crude, semi-circular barricade around him where he sits on a bench, trying to hold his jaw in place (where some asshole on the opposing team had nailed him with a goddamn _hockey stick_).

"Where is _who_, pretty…lady…?" Max tapers off, turning in bewilderment as she, suddenly fuming, brushes haughtily past him like he doesn't even exist, and within seconds she's elbowing rudely through his teammates, only to brace her fists at her hips and glare down at _Derek_ as if he's done something unbelievably stupid. As if he could somehow have _stopped_ the ape-sized human being from trying to break his face with a stick. (The _gall_.)

Ten, maybe twelve seconds after all this has taken place, his mind catches up with the situation and comes to terms with the fact that she's really truly HERE. (It's very much _not_ a happy revelation.)

"—referee should have _called_ that because he so _clearly_ hit you with the stick, the _bastard_," (is he hearing this correctly? is Casey angry _for_ him and not _because_ of him? he panics because this probably means he's hit his head much harder than he'd thought), "-but YOU did not have to jump in there and _hit him BACK_! What kind of suicidal moron _are_ you? Don't you know violence only begets more violence, Derek?" (okay, phew, there's that good ol' fashioned Casey rage. he'd been worried there, for a moment.) "Plus, he was _way_ bigger than you! And you were on their side of the ice! Have you no capacity for forethought WHATSOEVER?"

"Stop yelling, Casey." They're the first words he's spoken, and they sound like they're coming from someone else, far, far away. It's the way everyone and everything else around him sounds, too (except Casey. irritatingly, her hysteria is ringing through loud and clear). Then, "The hell are you doing here, anyway? You shouldn't be here." She ignores him and says something softly to Eddie, who's hovering silently beside her, and he wonders confusedly if he'd actually said any of that out loud or not. (Or maybe it'd just come out garbled…?) Then he wonders if this means he's concussed. Why is everyone just standing around letting this crazy person shriek at him? God, his head hurts.

"Anyway," she says, calmly Moving Right Along, and then she's leaning over him, fingers lightly on his brow, and he reacts immediately, snapping away with a sneer. (He's not in so much agony he doesn't still understand that Casey isn't _supposed_ to _touch him_.)

"What are you _doing_?" She looks offended. (Where's his fight-or-flight response? Why isn't he _running for the hills_?)

"Derek, you're hurt," She says (like _he's_ the one being completely unreasonable), and has absolutely _no right_ to sound or look so concerned. "Let me look at you—"

"You don't have to _touch me_ to look at me." He snaps, and has no idea why a lance of pure, white-hot terror scores through his entire body when she visibly represses a look of shocked hurt and starts to straighten, as if she means to _leave_—

"Don't be such a baby, Derek." She scolds at length, somewhat wearily, and then he's watching in mystified astonishment (not the _good kind_) as she commands his wings to _move_, and they _immediately obey_. He aims incredulous glares at each of his comrades in turn as they give way for her, as they make no attempt to stop this lunatic from sitting beside him on the bench, as they only stare hypnotically at Casey when she combs cool fingers through his sweat-dampened hair, pulling stragglers out of his eyes and back, away from his face. "How's your jaw?" She asks him, (_too_-)softly.

Every muscle in his body is painfully tensed as she quietly regards him; naked concern openly apparent, blue eyes sparkling with unshed tears in such awful, _awful_ proximity, but it isn't until her hand cups lightly over his, where it's (shaking now) clutching at the lower half of his face, that he reacts.

(It isn't pretty.)

"Why the _hell_ are you _here_?" He finally explodes, recoiling instantly away from her touch (because, in his potentially-concussed state he cannot _handle_ this…this…_this_!) and jumping to his feet to glower down at her, where her vague terror only makes him all the more violently eager to be rid of her. (She's not supposed to _be here_, coddling him like some child, _looking at him_ like that, watching him _fail_ –it's probably her fault all of this is happening in the first place! Hadn't he made it abundantly, explicitly clear that she's NOT ALLOWED to come to his games?) "I TOLD you you're _bad luck_! You're the reason we just _lost the game_!" His free hand has curled absently into a fist at his side from the effort of not breaking down and _crying_ at the pain all this yelling is causing him.

She doesn't seem to notice—or _care_—about any of this, however, because in the next instant she's on her feet, too, in his face (and does she HAVE to get so _close_ to him? it's hard enough to think as it is without having to fight off noxious vanilla fumes—), yelling right back.

"You're such a gigantic BLOCKHEAD! Don't you _dare_ try to blame YOUR stupid, barbaric _idiocy_ on ME! I didn't force that-that _fiend_ to hit you anymore than I forced YOU to try to _fight him_!" She makes a quick, stuttering movement with her hand, like she'd maybe been about to shove or poke him, but her eyes flash to his jaw and she retracts it just as fast, and he has difficulty satisfactorily justifying the fury that starts building (excruciatingly) somewhere right behind his eyes (he suspects, however, that it has more to do with all these strange new disruptions to their combat routines than it does her curious reluctance to touch him in an aggressive manner –the only contact from Casey with which he is familiar, or comfortable). "I only ever _come_ to these primitive, _asinine_ testosterone fests because I—because _George_ thinks you need the support! If I had a choice in the matter, I'd stay as FAR AWAY from these games as possible—"

"You've been coming to _all _of my games?" He wonders dimly, stunned. (He places the fury carefully on the backburner, in case he has need of it again soon.)

"Not…not by CHOICE! This is the _stupidest_ game ever! And your juvenile superstitions are JUST as stupid! If you lose, then you lose –just suck it up and get over it, don't _blame_ whatever or _who_ever's convenient! That's irrational and silly and-and just…_stupid_!"

Maybe it's just Casey and her incendiary provocations, maybe it's simply because his head is _throbbing_ and this is too public and he thinks his pride has suffered enough for the night, maybe he's just sick and tired of the whole thing –who can say? All he knows is he can't _think straight_ when she's around, so he grabs her by the arm (with his free hand) and pulls her roughly aside, intending to drag her out of the locker room and toss her back out where she belongs –_away_ _from him. _(He diligently ignores the twisting stab of pain that screws into his gut at the thought.)

And then Dmitri, the big, hulking brute (qualities Derek has always rather admired of the defenseman on the ice), abruptly materializes before them, glowers steadily down at Derek, puffs out his chest (in true Discovery Channel fashion), and rumbles (in his very broken English) that Derek can't treat her this way, which is followed in short order by a gruff command to let her go. And he'd been about to tell his very-imposingly-large Russian teammate to stuff it and get outta the way –really, he had, except there's this light, tugging pressure somewhere behind him, and he whips around, confused, to see Casey, slightly panicked-looking, trying to pry his fingers (clutched into a grip by far more harsh than he'd realized or intended) away from her skin. He releases her immediately, sick with shame, and instinctively steps in front of her (because Casey is _his_ problem. _His_, damn it—),

"She's fine." He asserts, willing Dmitri to back down. But the idiot forges ahead, reiterating that Derek can't treat her 'that way,' that she's a 'lady' (yeah, _right_, he wants to protest, but doesn't), that maybe he should just walk away and let her go and they could talk about this later, once he'd had the chance to cool down.

Derek will later cite mental unbalance and the crippling ache of his jaw as cause for the unbecoming and thoroughly bizarre flare of wild, possessive anger that assails him when Casey appears at his side and he catches that _look_ in her eyes, like she thinks this moron is being _noble_, like the guy is her long-awaited 'Ivanhoe,' come to rescue her from her Evil Stepbrother (except _here_, in this place, nobody knows they're supposed to be related but the two of them). He doesn't know _what_ to blame for _any_ of what he says in the wake of this unbidden hostility, though.

"Chillz, 'Mitri. My Casey here's a progressive, forward-thinking kinda gal." He's never been more uncomfortably conscious of her gaze on his person before; his periphery is insisting that her expression is eager, hopeful, quietly surprised at his proclamation. (He wonders if the icy-hot sensation prickling over his skin has anything to do with that 'remorse' concept everyone's always on about.) "She _likes_ her guys to be assholes; gives her a cheap little Drama Queen thrill to pretend offense for the attention, but at the end of the day? She _likes _us rough, rude, and unfaithful, and as long there's an apology for any misbehavior after the fact, she'll latch onto the first jerk who'll look her way..." He knows she knows he's alluding to Truman, and the _look_ on her face is almost enough to get him to _shut the fuck up_, but he doesn't, he has to keep going because he's Derek, because she's Casey, because this is the way it is, the way it _has to be_—

His train of thought derails in a disastrous, fiery cataclysm when he catches the single, glittering drop slipping down her cheek, and he's prepared to throw himself at her feet and recant if he has to, but apparently Dmitri catches the development, too, and heads Derek off by reaching forward and grabbing his jersey, unibrow dipping furiously and furrowing the sharp planes of his massive, hairy face. He reflects darkly that this isn't _quite_ how he'd expected to go (most of his Untimely Death Scenarios involve scantily-clad Caseys and any number of unspeakable positions, though there are a few which feature him Dying Heroically and Triumphing Over Insurmountable Odds –while Casey wails in despair at his loss) when a giant, meaty fist pulls up and cocks back, gearing up to pulverize his (really-so-very-pretty) face, and he swallows grimly as those rolled digits start to swing forward; irritated but resigned, he's ready to accept his comeuppance –but then along comes that _idiot_, _Casey_, trying to avert the violence, nudging her way in between him and Certain Ham-Fisted Doom, tripping over her own feet while Derek and Dmitri realize in horrified simultaneity that she's directly in the line of fire and it's too late to withdraw.

Vaguely, he hears Dmitri make a strangled noise, but it's only dimly, the sound muted and dull beneath his own frantic cry of warning, and both exclamations are drowned out by the soft crack of impact as the defenseman's fist grazes her jaw, and it doesn't matter that the other boy didn't mean it, it doesn't matter that he's obviously immediately, overwhelmingly sorry, because Casey's slipping to her knees on the floor, and the only thing Derek knows is that Dmitri has to _die_, to hell with the future of the team's dynamic, to hell with his future in hockey, _period_. All that matters is that the idiot _hit Casey_, and Derek scarcely has time to register that he's flying forward before he's tumbling with Dmitri to the ground—

-and then it all just goes straight to hell.

* * *

When he makes it out to the parking lot (limping-wheezing-wincing with every _agonizing_ step he takes), Casey's sitting behind the wheel of the Prince, and he doesn't look at her, doesn't say anything when she orders him to give her the keys, he just complies.

They don't speak the entire drive back. _He _barely bothers to breathe, partly because he wants to help the silence along in its unremitting quest to be Oppressive, partly because he has no idea what the hell to say (for probably the first time in his entire life), but also partly because it feels like his lungs are on the verge of collapse and might well fail on him if he doesn't take it easy.

He does keep shifting his gaze toward her when she isn't looking, however, eyes sweeping the smooth line of her jaw for evidence of the violence she'd suffered on his behalf. (He keeps hoping he'll wake up, laid out flat on the ice, or maybe wrapped in the sterile, soft whites of a hospital bed, that all the myriad unthinkable events of the evening have just been the result of one incredibly unpleasant dream…)

Casey's hand folds gently over creamy skin (purpling darkly along the ridge of her jaw), and he's never hated himself more.

* * *

No sooner are they over the threshold than she's got a hold of his wrist and starts pulling him silently to the back of his apartment (and for one terrible moment he thinks she's headed for his bedroom, but then they're past it, stepping toward the bathroom, and his heart crawls slowly out of his throat and back into place); he's equally mute on the trek, dropping his gear thoughtlessly somewhere along the way. When they reach their destination, she gently, firmly guides him to the toilet, and softly commands him to take off his shirt while she turns away to start raiding the cabinets for (he guesses) medical supplies. He considers protesting for one long moment, then wordlessly complies, stretching the cloth up over his head as his muscles strain and protest against the action. Apparently sensing his distress, Casey steps closer to help him out of the shirt, one sleeve at a time, with extreme care.

Then she's pressing a cool hand to bare flesh and he sucks in a strangled breath which she appears to mistake for pain.

"That hurt?" There's the distant echo of concern glittering in her eyes as she catches his gaze, and he can't look away.

"No," he says, because it's the only thing that gets through. She frowns at him and sighs angrily.

"Look, Derek, if it hurts somewhere you've got to let me know; I can't help you if you refuse to _cooperate_—"

"I'm _fine_." He insists, getting angry (anger is familiar, anger is _safe_). She glowers heavily at him now.

"Let me put this terms your unevolved brain can understand: I need to know where and _how much _it hurts, because if you've got an injury I don't know about and just gloss over and it turns out to be, oh, I don't know, a _broken rib_ or something, it could do some serious, long-term damage and endanger your _hockey _career—"

"_Casey_," his voice is rough, cautionary, "It doesn't hurt there." He grabs hold of her wrist (careful to be gentle, this time), and he drags her fingers down, over his sternum, and left, his eyes actively holding hers captive. He catches her swallowing tremulously and stops himself from doing the same. "Here." She glances down at the hand locked around her wrist and he lets it go at once.

"O-okay," and he's glad to have her off-balance, maybe even a little nervous, because he can already tell he's not going to be at his best and sharpest tonight after having his head used like a punching bag (_twice_).

Only, in the minute or so she's been poking around his bathroom and laying out various instruments and bottles in a mystifying configuration around his feet, she seems to've become Suddenly Impervious, because by the time she lightly nudges his knees apart and _kneels between his legs_, she doesn't appear to be affected in the slightest. He searches frantically for something scathing to say, but he's finding it nearly impossible not to be conscious of the fact that she's pressed right up against him, probably a lot nearer than she needs to be, and incoherently frustrated that it doesn't seem to bother her, that she doesn't even really seem to be aware of it.

_He_, meanwhile, has never been _more_ aware of her, and the infuriating insight brings its close friend terror along for the ride. He doesn't like it. He's_ always _been aware of her; he can't _not_ notice her when she's in the same room, and it's annoying, _maddening_, and he really doesn't have a choice but to fuck with her to make her just as aware of him as he is of her. (Because if _he_ has to suffer, she should have to suffer, too.)

But that's always just been something he's had to deal with. Now she's between his legs, on her knees, one small, cool hand resting lightly on his bare arm as she cleans the cut on his lip with delicate, focused care. And, what's more, she's refusing to look him in the eyes (he knows because he's been doggedly trying to catch her gaze) and it's driving him absolutely crazy because he _needs_ to know what she's thinking (-after all, how can he win this game if she won't _play_ it?).

Eventually, the dam breaks.

"It was none of his business." He says out of nowhere, and immediately curses himself for it. (He hadn't approved the order for the release of that statement. The chain of command is _breaking down_.) But she finally looks at him and he sucks in a breath because they're _so close_ to each other. (And they have been in the past, plenty of times, but this is the first time his brains have been swiss cheese inside his skull, so it's _different_.)

"What?" Her fingers are hovering near his mouth. He could bite them, he muses insanely. Send her shrieking into the sink. Might be funny.

His fingers (with a mind of their own now, apparently) curl softly under her chin, instead, and tilt it carefully to one side, his thumb grazing carefully, gently along her jawbone, where a nasty bruise is already forming, and he swallows heavily (this guilt thing tastes _terrible_). "_Casey_," He rasps, and his voice breaks (_damn it_) as he says her name, willing her to understand (so he doesn't have to _say_) that he's _sorry_.

Her lips part faintly, as if she's about to say something, but then she appears to think better of it and firmly shuts her mouth.

And he realizes, with a sick feeling, how very small she is; she'd crumpled like paper at a glancing blow. To him, she'd always been this immovable, implacable force of nature, impossible to force into submission. But she'd just gone _down_, overpowered in an instant, finally cowed before him; he'd been there to witness her fall, he'd seen a truly and completely vulnerable Casey McDonald –and the big, terrifying secret?

He'd_ hated it_. Wished he could take it back. Especially since…since it was pretty much entirely his fault, especially since she'd done it for _him_. But the only part of these emotions he can properly identify is the _rage_, because he's also _beyond_ pissed that she'd so thoughtlessly throw herself in the path of an oncoming fist.

So that's what comes spilling out.

"What the _fuck_ were you thinking, getting between us like that?" She seems to notice him shaking before he does, and looks away, biting her lip, and he could _just_—

"I was thinking you have to…you have to look out for…_family_." She meets his gaze steadily at this last word. He tastes bile. "Any _sister_ would've done the same." Her hands are on his knees, his fingers fall away from her face. And while he calmly freaks out (and doesn't even properly know WHY), she finishes patching him up, silent and stony-faced while he sits there, trying to understand the indisputably insane impulse to grab her and…and…actually, that's where the impulse ends and the ambiguous, unsettling confusion begins. (He doesn't attempt to sort through the uncertainty, because he has a petrifying notion that he will _not_ like what he finds therein.)

At long last, after several more quietly fraught moments, she secures a final bandage around his abdomen and mumbles softly that she's done. With all due agony, he bends left to pick up the salve she'd been carefully soothing over his more shallow injuries, and he tries to return the favor of her tending, but she slaps his hand away with a faint hiss.

"_I_ can take care of it _myself_." She growls. "_I'm_ not totally and completely useless."

She starts to lift herself, laying her hands on his thighs and pushing herself up, and by the time she's standing between his legs (before she can move away), his hands (again, entirely of their own volition) snap out to grab her around the waist and hold her in place. She looks down at him with an unreadable expression on her face, and he shoves mercilessly at the Realization trying to surface, determined not to see what it's fighting so tenaciously to show him. Then he stands, and it dawns on him belatedly that he's shirtless, in the privacy of his apartment, _holding Casey_.

"I must've hit my head _really_ hard," he whispers unsteadily, and doesn't give her the chance to respond before his hand is on her face (_again_), half-concealing the burgeoning bruise, and he's looking at her eyes, trying to get _her_ to look at _him_, but (_again_) she's refusing. (She's so much _smaller_ than he is that even his hand against her cheek seems so very _large_ –he's never noticed before because she fills a room so completely when she enters it-)

He has no idea when his eyes had fallen to her mouth, so he's startled when a falling tear slides over her lips.

Then she's looking him straight in the eye,

"I broke up with Truman at the beginning of the semester." She says evenly, and he just stares at her because he'd had no idea. "Contrary to what _some people_ believe, I don't _enjoy_ being treated like trash, I don't _like_ assholes, and I won't _stand_ for being hurt at some _idiot's_ expense." And then (while he struggles not to vomit), she's disentangling herself from him and moving away, bending to pick up her bag, and just like that…she's _gone_ –from the room, from his apartment, and (he discovers shortly thereafter) from his _life_.

* * *

LOOKIE! I addressed the Truman Issue! _Finally_! (Barely! Hardly at all! But at least it's out of the way and Casey's officially single!)

Also. Yeah, Derek'd probably have needed to be hospitalized after all the Violence (!), but let's just pretend that Casey's a totally competent medical professional and knows Exactly What She's Doing. I declined (for the sake of ANGST) to let him go to the ER. He was pretty miffed about the matter, but he's prettier when he's pouting, anyway.

AND! Just want to assure everyone that this is by no means the last chapter. Got the next one all planned out, just gotta write it. No worries, kidlets. (Cliffhangers are GOOD FOR THE SOUL.)

(I just tried PEACH COFFEE. It is bewilderingly delicious.)


	12. prank wars: part I

(I am now officially operational again. RL has at last relented and now I can get back to what's important: rabid fan-girling.)

This installment is actually "tenuously connected to its predecessor by thick cords of despicable continuity." (Oh, Penny Arcade, how I love thee.) Which is a first for this series, I think.

Crazy.

Also -it's only Part I. Length got to be a bit much, and I'm not all-the-way finished with the conclusion even, so I've decided to just cut it in half.

Meanwhile!

(Warning:) Most of this chapter consists of Derek moping around with a (truly epic) Angst Bucket, although there're also undertones of his soul slowly shriveling up and dying inside of him. I mean. Casey's here, too (sort of), you've just gotta get past all of Derek's bitching first. I mean. All of Derek's self-destructive introversion. Um.

[insert disclaimer here]

* * *

_::in which C- is pointedly AWOL and Derek employs a dubious methodology::_

Derek likens the experience to playing a tremendously frustrating game of Hide-n-Seek with a mythological creature (tune in tomorrow, for another mind-numbing, ultimately useless chronicle into the arduous hunt for the Elusive Keener Beast: _Klutzilla_) –even though, _technically_, he's not really been _searching _for her so much as…making sure at a variety of locales he hadn't previously frequented –or known about at all—that she's not around to bother him. (And so what if he's thorough? Derek's always been a man of uncompromising, scrupulous principle.)

It's just…she's never around to shoo away anymore. And he's just…not used to it is all. Even if he'd hated the hassle, he'd spent the past few years (begrudgingly) adjusting to its (annoying) status as one of the many Unavoidable Hazards of being (unwittingly) trapped in her orbit.

The calendar on his floor indicates it's been nearly a month since he's even so much as seen her (the date of her departure is only blacked out because it'd been the occasion of such a huge upset for the hockey team). She doesn't answer her phone (much less the door to her dorm –but, you know, whatever, she hadn't done that for him _Before_, either; the only irritating thing about Recently is that she appears to have brainwashed both of her roommates into not letting him in, too, which never would've stuck _Before_); she hasn't been coming to The Usual Spot for lunch (and she hasn't been at any of the hundred-or-so _other_ locations he –hasn't—been happening to visit repeatedly); she appears to have transferred out of all of his classes (despite it being several weeks into the second semester –freaking Keener privileges); and (though he definitely _hasn't_ been keeping an eye out for her) he's pretty sure she hasn't been in attendance at even _one_ of his hockey games (let alone pre-hockey-game-freak-out) since…The Incident.

* * *

He wouldn't ask (it's not like he _cares_), but his dad's been leaving some very strongly-worded messages on his voicemail lately, complete with threats of Imminent Disowning if amends are not soon made. (Or at the very least attempted.) Which would've been harrowing enough without the rest of the fam contributing their own promised persecutions in the background. (He's not sure what 'fluorosulfuric acid' is, but Lizzie had seemed quite adamant that she could do some very unkind things to his sacred hockey card collection with it.)

"Seen my crazy step-sister?" You can't _buy_ nonchalance of this caliber; Derek's just about as cavalier as a guy can get, slumping casually into the seat beside Romy, exuding unpracticed indifference from his very _pores_. The Giggler turns to him with a smile that slides awkwardly all over her face and a single ginger brow popped high and angled low.

"Sure I have, stranger. 'Bout this tall, curly hair, scarily neurotic? The one you _would not_ shut up about on our date?" That…is not the answer he'd been expecting. She laughs, and there's something unpleasant about the sound of it. "Chillz, Derek Venturi, I forgive you. By the end of the night I had your _full _attention, so no hard feelings." He's not in the mood for this stupid game, he concludes, and starts to tell her as much (he's just irritable –hasn't been sleeping as much), but he comes up short when her cool hand slides against his (still mending) jaw. Something squeezes painfully in his chest and it takes every ounce of his (fortunately substantial) willpower not to flinch away from the touch. "You don't have to use your sister as an excuse to come around and ask for…_seconds_." She arches toward him suggestively, breath teasing over his chin, but the only thing he registers—

"_Step_-sister." He says, face blank. Romy pulls away slightly, frowning. Then she shakes her head and soldiers on.

"Right, of course." [Insert Nervous Giggling here.] "In any case, Mr. Star Hockey Player, there's no need to drag Crazy McOCD into this. You just…you lemme know _exactly_ what you want and we'll see what I can do for you." His spontaneous aversion to the red-head has nothing to do with her apparent (and admittedly rather surprising) disdain for his step-sister; obviously, he's just tired from his long night with Veronica (and the prospect of another he has lined up this very evening with Aubrey…no, Dana…or is it Anna...?), so much so that he simply can't be bothered to play along. That's all it is, plain and simple.

"So…you _have_ seen her recently?" She sits back, clearly upset, and he doesn't even feel bad for not caring. (His is a world blissfully free of remorse. He'd argue with his Invisible Would-Be Sibling that this is merely another indication of his near-divine implacability, but she can't be freaking _found_ to _have_ the argument in the first place.)

"No, actually, I haven't." She huffs, and shuts down.

The bell rings shortly thereafter, and without so much as a word of parting, he picks himself up to head to his own class.

* * *

It's not like he _misses_ her or anything. That's just silly. Idiotic. Ridiculous. He's been looking for a way to rid himself of her For Good since before their parents even got hitched. (Operation: Disengagement, anyone?)

Therefore, the unexpected providence of her desertion is by no means unwelcome. Quite the opposite, in fact. After the first couple of weeks (during which period it eventually, finally settles in that he's suddenly got Nothing But Time), he even manages to recall and reacquire bits and pieces of the happily carefree, bachelor lifestyle he'd maintained before she'd forcefully occupied his territory and started infecting the locals with her various debilitating abnormalities.

It's just…things've been sort of…dull, lately. Boring and tedious. Dreary. Monotonous. Lackluster. (Yes, he's got synonyms aplenty, ladies and gentlemen; disturbingly, his step-sib's truancy has done wonders for his study habits.)

(No comment.)

He's been keeping himself busy –his dating game has never been more prosperous (or, at the very least, the girls have never been so abundantly accommodating), his hockey skills never more honed, his school work has _never_ been so…well, worked on, nor his apartment more tidy, but he somehow seems (bafflingly) to have plenty of time leftover to feel both vaguely agitated and infuriatingly listless. Lethargic. Detached and indifferent.

He finds he can still appreciate the universe's elegant, malicious ironies, however, so when they're given _The Hollow Men_ to read in class that afternoon, he enjoys a wry laugh at his own expense. It's pretty hilarious.

Life's little amusements.

* * *

There's an itty-bitty, teensy-weensy, totally insignificant, crazy-thrashing part of him that _recognizes _the fractious apathy for what it is (–_repeating_—), that grins malevolently when it reminds him of the only other female whose leaving had pulled the earth off its axis.

It's this same whispering part that preys merrily on his (hypothetical) insecurities and intimates softly, with cloying perception and grave reality, that _he_ drove them both away.

* * *

The previous semester, he'd stolen her key (divining –accurately– that it was bound to come in handy at some point), and later Very Convincingly played the fool when she came barging into his apartment, raging at him with her –yes, valid—suspicions and demanding the return of her 'pilfered property' on pain of…well, he doesn't remember the precise words (just the way her fingertips had capered dangerously over his abs where she'd had him cornered), but he knows it involved some of his more cherished anatomy and possibly a hammer and sounded, on the whole, fairly unpleasant.

She'd ended up staying the night (and fixing him dinner. and wrestling with him in the hallway for Primary Shower Privileges. and requisitioning his bed for the evening. and stealing a pair of his pajama bottoms, even though he'd objected, even though they'd looked baggy and ridiculous on her, slung low on her hips, hem dipping indecently—_focus, Derek_), as both of her roommates had been out (or so she'd claimed at the time) and she'd had no other way to get into her dorm until morning. Obviously, she'd eventually had to purchase a new key, but she still occasionally drops hints that he owes her $65 (which is the cost of the key plus an outrageously inflated 'criminal interest fee' –he remembers very nearly choking on the proud satisfaction of his beautiful corruption, at last coming to sweet, sweet fruition), and he continues to be feign blithe ignorance.

So he's had this fabulous tool at his disposal for some time, and sure, yeah, he's broken into her inner sanctum once or twice just for kicks (just because he _could_), and of _course_ he's made certain these auspicious few occasions are lovingly commemorated with some (typically slapdash) token of his presence, but to have shelved this (truly) invaluable instrument for so very long without even a _thought_ for its restless legion of Endless Possibilities?

Criminal.

* * *

Initially, he keeps it simple and indirect (not that he has much of a choice to do otherwise since she appears to have vanished off the face of the planet).

He finds premium real estate (her bathroom, her bedroom, her underwear drawer) to hide all the new plastic barnyard animals he's scribbled her (misspelled) last name onto with only the most permanent black ink he could steal from the studio art department at the last minute. He purchases subscriptions (in her name) to three or four publications endorsed by companies which make little to no attempt to conceal the fact that they actively exploit child and/or immigrant labor, directly or indirectly sanction any form of serious environmental degradation, or receive –in any substantial capacity— backing from Phillip Morris. Then he experiments with different mixtures of her nail polish until he figures out the precise color recipes for a full spectrum of runny, sick-looking browns. And then he starts finger-painting on her toilet.

At the end of this first field trip to her dormitory (since several months _Before_; he'd only come here twice altogether, actually -he'd gotten used to her coming to _him_), he feels a tiny glimmer of self-satisfaction, the brief adrenaline-tingle of accomplishment, the reckless thrill of anticipated retaliation.

(This joy is the small, fleeting sort, but the important thing is that it's _there_.)

* * *

When, three days later, she has failed to undertake counter-measures, he blames her obnoxious sense of entitlement. Obviously, this silent snubbery is meant to communicate to him that she feels she's deserving of _more_ than such bland, weak material.

Well.

Derek wouldn't want to be inconsiderate of her _feelings_.

* * *

On his second foray, Derek makes a Great and Noble Sacrifice and uses individual pages of only his most filthy and obscene Sophisticated Gentlemen's Magazines to wallpaper her shower, topping the Restroom Redecoration Project off by notching her scale up a few pounds and replacing all of her six or seven million bathing products with various tasty liquids from her refrigerator.

Then he's back in her bedroom, humming the new Coldspray single to himself while he tears out all the last chapters in her books and randomly redistributes dust covers, strumming righteously on his air-guitar when he finally moves on to gleefully ravaging the method behind the madness of her 'Highly-Specialized Organizational Schema' (a system he's convinced would fully baffle even top intelligence agencies, though a paranoid schizophrenic might have some luck teasing sense out of it) by tucking them back onto the shelf with no regard for alphabetization, chronology, genre, subject matter, authorial achievement, color, shape, or size.

His mind ever-so-generously provides a dramatic enactment of her outrage, and he takes a moment to savor the conjured image as he climbs back to his feet, grinning (almost-)cheerfully at the way his imaginary step-sister's face pinches with (vibrant, stunning) wrath. This disturbing mental diction attaches itself (mercifully) to the thought that there's lots more work to be done and no time to waste doing it, and then it's just a matter of quietly, brutally murdering the former reflection on his way to her closet to pair all her shoes with the wrong mates (an easy, effective, time-honored classic).

* * *

This time he is careful to avoid even well-meaning Cautious Optimism, and so is safe from the fiendish reach of Potential Disappointment.

He hardly even thinks about her during the two weeks, three days, nine hours, and twenty-six minutes of sustained inactivity that follow.

Derek currently has no theories regarding the hockey puck that smashes into the television when the local call for the annual Dance Mania tryouts appears on the screen. (It is advised that all inquiries be directed to his publicist, as Mr. Venturi is not presently available for comment.)

* * *

Derek likes to consider his pranking renown a crucial part of his identity, as much a part of him as his skill on the ice, his Endearing Bastard charm, and his unparalleled ability to get underneath his step-sister's skin.

As with any form of art (and make no mistake, he's got 'being Derek Venturi' down to precisely that—an _art_), to hone his skill, each of these requires diligent practice, thorough preparation, and the ability and willingness to experiment and improvise. Pranking at the Seasoned Veteran level is a sophisticated, occasionally quite involved task, but a true Aficionado never balks or shies away from a challenge.

Which this situation with his step-sib very clearly _is_. Half the satisfaction of a Prank Well-Done comes from the reaction of the victim(s) –and so far, it's the half that's missing.

Most people, while briefly entertaining, tend to answer his unprovoked antagonism strictly within the bounds of (spineless) propriety, perhaps expressing some notion of anger or irritation but ultimately quickly getting over it. Others play along to save face and gracefully accept their (respectively public or private) humiliations, and there're those who choose not to react much at all, perhaps just flavoring all future interactions with a general air of bitterness, and still others (this a very small, rewardingly-female few) prefer to think of it as a crude (if usually astonishingly effective) way to get their attention (and ultimately, into their pants).

But _none_ of them tear his name in half, none act hysterically as if the world is coming to an end, none viciously swear revenge and then proceed to launch a tireless series of (increasingly clever and successful) attacks in an unending campaign for Just Retribution. None of them but Ca—his goddamn _step-sister_. She has this stupidly unique way of making his most mundane efforts ridiculously gratifying.

(She has, apparently, ruined him for anyone else.)

It's why he _has_ to go back again –why he's got no choice in the matter. What sort of professional can't get the world's Shortest Fuse to explode for him after such focused, single-minded disruption?

* * *

For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, Derek skulks about her little cracker-box of a dorm, improvising as inspiration strikes him: he assigns publicly inappropriate ringtones to the names most frequently in her call history, then goes through and (generously) passes out hilarious new nicknames to every entry in her address book. He does this while moving about her room, randomly relocating any moveable object that comes into his free hand, positive that in the throes of the now inevitable OCD-induced psychosis to follow, she won't be able to _stop _herself from getting back at him (as an attempted deterrent, at the very least, if not as an out-and-out declaration of _war_; painstakingly, he's tried to impress upon her that the only ways to dispel his incurred wrath are to _beat_ him or, failing that, to placate him).

After he tears little, seemingly innocuous runs into every last pair of her vast assortment of panty hose (each one a little mini-freak out all their own), he starts in on his _piece de resistance_, confiscating all of her CDs (for his safe-keeping) and sliding various death metal compilations (which he'd spent most of the weekend ripping) into the then-empty cases to serve as their replacement.

He's all of ten minutes into the project when he sees It: an anonymous, unassuming blue book, hidden in plain sight amidst her school texts. Wicked joy draws him irresistibly toward it, and weird nostalgia makes his hands tingle with warmth when he picks it up. (He hadn't been aware she'd brought this with her.)

'It' is her journal –not the one she (yes, actually) keeps under lock & key (not in the bank, as she has Edwin believing, but in a drawer or safe he has _yet_ to locate), but almost as good. This one, like her ridiculous 'dream diary,' serves a more specific, exclusive function: to be an 'Official Record' of his 'loathsome transgressions, extravagant perjuries, and chronic short-comings.'

She'd started it sometime over the summer before their junior year in high school, and his discovery of the artifact had eventually erupted (like all things between them seem inevitably to do) into an ongoing, private sort of…mini-war. After the first few entries, he'd started filling in important events she might've missed, occasionally snarking in the margins, sometimes even contributing crude and/or interpretive illustrations depicting 'dramatic reenactments' of the action in her narrative. He'd come back later to find not only new entries, but that she'd also gone back over everything he'd written in, correcting his grammar and spelling, responding to his teasing with vicious barbs, occasionally vowing to destroy him, so on and so forth.

It hadn't been an all-the-time thing, or even a 'thing' he really thought about; sometimes, he'd be snooping in her room (for the simple thrill of violating her privacy, usually), and there it'd be, and he'd kill a couple hours with it in his own bedroom, and that'd be the end of it for a while. Neither of them had ever broached the subject, so they'd never spoken about it, and after so long not seeing it, he'd pretty much forgotten it even existed.

And now…here it is, leather-bound proof of the sheer enormity of Derek's impact in her life.

Grinning, wondering what new things she's written about him, he cracks the book open.

(And.)

"What…what the hell..." He starts flipping through pages wildly, certain he's not seeing this correctly, positive this is some _horrible mistake_.

But there are so few pages _left_ now that it's only several seconds later that grim reality settles in: it's all gone. All of it, every word she'd written, every doodle he'd drawn –half of the pages in the book have very obviously been torn out, leaving only blank, white, empty space—two years' worth of history, erased. (Read: Derek Venturi no longer _exists_.)

'_You can't just cut me out of the fam,'_ he'd told her once. But apparently, she could cut him out of _her_ life, easy as ripping pages out of a stupid, goddamn book.

Calmly, he drops the 'abridged edition' of (what had once been) their little battle journal, retrieves his keys from her desk, and leaves, kicking the tested-and-true process of 'Deny, Deny, Deny' into high gear before the bottom of his world can drop away beneath his feet.

* * *

(Then.)

Almost to the half-way point between his apartment and her dorm, he realizes he's forgotten his backpack (an amateur mistake –he is _slipping_). Cursing, he jogs back, casting a frantic glance at his watch, upping the jog to a sprint when he sees it's almost four –The Roommates start filtering in at four, and there's no _way_ they'll let him in once they're locked safely in their Impenetrable Fortress of Female Solidarity.

He's got eleven minutes to spare when he bursts into the building, but he only waves a quick hello to the new, cute receptionist (he files her Attractive Quotient away for later), hurrying past her to the third floor, leaping flights of stairs in single, breath-taking bounds.

Derek bowls around the corner at breakneck speed, glad he's made good time, glad that—

(-_**no-**_)

He wrenches to an abrupt halt at what his eyes are insisting he's actually seeing at the opposite end of the hall: the tumble of her hair, cushioned on a broad shoulder; the slender line of her profile, pressed easily into an affectionate embrace; the gentle knife of her laughter cutting through the air straight at him as she pulls away from (there's nothing fucking elegant about this irony, Universe) _Dmitri_ and stretches up on tippie-toes to peck the giant on the cheek.

Derek's never been less affected in his entire life. He's so Totally Unaffected, as a matter of fact, that if he doesn't get out of here in the next half-an-immediately, he's going to be overcome by the sheer force of his indifference.

* * *

He's got his phone in (shaking) hand, and he's not even sure what number he's dialed when he holds the receiver to his ear, breathing low and deep while he waits for someone to answer.

The tinkling cadence of her voice is music to his ears, even when it's been turned up to a full, decibel-defiant explosion.

"SMEREK!"

"Heya, Smarti-pants." His voice is steady and flat. "Tell me the good news, lieutenant. I need a full report of Recent Activity in the Venturi household."

"Aye-aye, Smerek!"

(_This_ is what it's supposed to be like between a brother and a sister, he thinks furiously, at approximately the same instant it occurs to him that it never will be –not between him and Casey, not ever.)

* * *

He doesn't know why this all feels so very…déjà vu, why he's got the strangest impression he's been precisely this noxiously drunk with a girl once before, nerve endings humming, motor skills actively malfunctioning, sight spinning the night-darkened landscape into a lovely, fuzzy-black-twirly-world.

"Casey," he says, really and truly for absolutely no reason at all, which is all the weirder for him after several weeks' worth of her name being anathema. (She'd called him that once –'anathema.' And afterward, when she'd explained what the hell that meant, he'd considered its hardcore potential as D-Rock's first album name. It eventually lost out to _Hobo Tofu_, which was later unseated by _Klutzilla Returns: Revenge of Klutzilla._)

"'Fraid not, bubby." (Who the hell is 'bubby?' Is _he_ supposed to be bubby? He's not okay with being called bubby.)

"I _hate_ brunettes," he tells his bubby-naming companion, who is (oh, how nice) helping him to stand. And (would you look at that) who is also _hot_.

"Well, much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news," says the Very Pretty Blonde, "as far as I can tell, _you're_ a brunette." She's helping him stumble into his empty apartment (though he doesn't remember opening the door), and he thinks she's really so very thoughtful and pleasant, and not at all crazy or shrill. Qualities he _likes_ in his women. "Don't s'ppse a little self-hate ever did 'nyone any harm, though." She laughs and it's nice and everything, but he's heard better. (He's not going to name any names or anything, he's just saying.) "Guess that's where the aggressive drinking comes in, to pick up the slack."

"Who _are_ you?" He wonders, sensing curiously that he's met her before.

"So nice to know I've been remembered." A beat. "Name's Jenny."

"Jenny…Jenny…" His mind is not the easiest place to navigate at the moment, and he runs across at least six possible identities for that name with this voice and those boobs—"Casey's—her roommate?" She steers him toward his bedroom with insistent authority, quiet for an irritatingly long moment. Too long. "What are you…I mean, _why_ are you here?" The quiet picks up where it left off, crawling slowly into eternity, and he's terrified she won't answer before he forgets what they're talking about. Then she blows out a short huff of air and lightly kicks through his bedroom door, glancing up at him briefly with the _weirdest_ expression, like she's exasperated and disappointed and also slightly annoyed with him—

"Casey sent me to come pick you up." She admits at long last, and he digs his heels firmly into the carpet, temporarily halting forward progress so he can look at this tiny Jenny person and assess whether or not he's hearing things, or if perhaps this person is playing some kind of seriously fucked-up trick on him. "Apparently after your six-hundredth beer, one of your hockey pals gave her a call and asked her to come retrieve her idiot, since you're clearly in no condition to operate a motor vehicle –or your_self_ for that matter, but she begged you off on me, and here I am."

He can't process so much information at once. Just which of these (highly murderable) '_hockey pals_' knows Casey well enough to be on calling terms with her? And what on earth would have given said 'pal' the idea that he is _Casey's_ 'idiot?' (Wait.) Had _Dmitri_ sent her after him? (He explains away the searing, _stabbing_ agony in his gut by way of convincing himself that he's ruptured something and is simply bleeding out. No worries.) And speaking of (not) _seeing_ Casey, why the hell hadn't she ridden out immediately herself to watch him (potentially) make a gigantic, humiliating ass of himself?

"And though Casey's paid me well not to say anything to you about any of this, frankly, some of the pranks you pull are beginning make life difficult for Ren and me, which is annoying, and the rest of them combine to awaken Casey's Misogynistic, Ball-Crushing, Inner-Bitch, which, while sometimes hilarious, is _exhausting_. And also annoying. I can only figure once you two get past your respective Head-Entrenched-in-Ass Afflictions and hack out some sort of peace treaty, life will get better for everyone who's been unwittingly caught in the crossfire." She sets a hand lightly at his hips, helping him to maintain his balance while he kicks off his shoes. "So I'm telling you, if you're just trying to get to her, or back at her, you _have_, congratulations, and please stop." He's concerned he's dying of alcohol poisoning when he considers bursting into song at the revelation that he's (definitely-certainly-absolutely) been getting to Casey, after all.

She deftly sets the edge of her heel against the tips of his socks, holding him steady at the shoulders while he steps automatically up and out of them. He used to do this with his mother, he recalls, and then decides he doesn't want to think about his mother anymore.

"If you're trying to get into her pants, however, then this is _totally_ the wrong way to go about it, try an approach that doesn't make _my_ life miserable, and please stop." While Jenny lifts his shirt over his head, he wonders if her (disgusting, weirdly common) misconception about their relationship means Casey hasn't told her roommates that she and Derek are going to be sharing a real, live, flesh-and-blood sibling in less than a month. Just in case she hasn't, he figures he should keep the information to himself. It's not all that important, anyway. "Clearly, she's pissed at you, so you might try, I dunno, _apologizing_ somehow. Instead of trying to push her over her already _very thin_ threshold into full-blown mental illness. That's just punishing Renee and, more importantly, _me_." Now they're just staring at each other, Derek wobbling uncertainly, not sure _what_ he's feeling, and Jenny smiling softly up at him, hand bracing at his elbow.

Finally, after careful review and contemplation of The Facts, he comes to the following conclusion:

"Casey's a big stupid-head." No, wait, "A _huge_ stupid-head." Furthermore, "I do _not_ want to sex Casey." Correction. "_Have_ sex _with _Casey. I don't want it. The sex, I mean. With Casey."

"You know the really sad thing is, you're probably not even gonna remember any of this. Which is unfortunate for several reasons, not the least of which is that you're not gonna have any embarrassing memories to commemorate this night of drunken debauchery."

"You're not very nice." He tells her, reflecting on Cousin Vicky's similar brand of caustic frankness. And also Cousin Vicky's similar brand of looking freakishly like Casey. (Who, incidentally, is _also_ not very nice.) "I don't think I like you."

"Much as that pains me," Jenny quips, sounding bored, "I'm pretty sure my obligations to you end here." She sets one cold hand against his chest, shoves him gently, and watches dispassionately as he topples helplessly onto his mattress.

"What, you're not gonna stay to tuck me in? _Casey_ always tucks me in." She smiles at him pityingly. He's too busy trying to figure out why this attractive girl doesn't want to take advantage of him to read much into it.

"Truly, bubby, if you had yourself a nice pair of tits, you'd be _precisely_ my kind of idiot." After she leaves, he stares at the wall blankly for several very, very, _very_ long moments.

He supposes that probably answers his question.

* * *

The Inebriated Experience appears to be something of an existential 'suffering-into-truth' inducement for Derek.

AN: The 'only other female' responsible for throwing Derek's world off-kilter (for setting the precedent to begin with, really) is intended to be his mother. Sally, while certainly an important girl to Derek, maybe even legitimately his 'first love,' was an infinitesimally minimal presence when compared with his madre and/or Casey (women he can never _completely_ escape, because they're _family_). His ma's leaving and Casey's jarring appearance into his life have very much influenced the person he's becoming. Sally's impact on his world was less...indelible. Ta-dum!

A couple more things: I hadn't planned on Romy or Dmitri being more than just one-time guest spots, but I thought it was pretty cool they worked themselves back in. Also, there'll be _actual_ Dasey in the second half of this chapter -in a _pool_, even. ^_^

And!

Derek's inner-monologue is almost darn-right eloquent (occasionally, if you discount all the parenthetical MADNESS that I have laced LIKE ARSENIC all along his brain words). I blame Casey. And possibly the inimitable Elements of Style, which I've been made to read by a group of highly-literate ninja language-protection-enforcers with a Judo Grip on English. But that is another matter entirely.


	13. prank wars: part II

*dies*

_Oh, yes. There will be Plot Holes._

I've been fighting with this chapter for _three months_ now, and this...this is just as good as it's gonna get. Take it or leave it, I guess. (I'll probably wrestle with it some more later, maybe try to convince it to Make Sense, but I...I just need a break for a while. One can only take so much frustration before drowning oneself in one's tears. Or alcohol. Whichever's more readily available.)

Either way, thank you all so much for prodding me for updates, for your thoughtful, hilarious reviews, and for your continued support. You guys are so the Cat's Pajamas. (Have I used that before? Am I now _recycling_ material? Ah, jayzus.)

Also. The timeline for this chappie's probably a bit…unclear. The action of it takes place roughly over the course of a week-and-a-half, but even I wasn't entirely sure how much time was supposed to have been passing from one section to the next. I am what the layfolk call a 'lazy bastard.'

Finally. According to the WikiGod, 'Tenderheart Bear' (from _Care Bear_ fame) '_helps everyone show and express their feelings and helps his fellow Care Bears be the most caring they can be. In the 1980s movies and cartoons he was the leader of the Care Bears. He is orange (originally brown) and his tummy symbol is a big red heart with a pink outline._' In case you were curious.

(...you'll see. and then probably cringe.)

Rating upped for language and Impending Porn (not in this chapter, chums, sorry).

Warning: I have no love for Derek's denial unless it's _pathological_. Just so you know. This knowledge will serve you well as you read this through.

[tomorrow morning, i'll probably disavow owning even this chapter. for now, we'll limit the disavowals to ownership of LwD.]

* * *

_::in which the long-awaited Inevitable Confrontation ensues::_

Derek wakes up and immediately wishes he hadn't.

He tries, for the seven or so seconds it takes for his brain to start throwing itself again the walls of his skull, shrieking for liberation, to go back to sleep, but then his alarm clock goes off (even though he's _–_almost-_ positive_ he hadn't set it the night before) and he rolls off of his bed in a maneuver that's actually more Startled Leap plus Graceless Fumble than any sort of 'roll.' And that's when some twisted little shit starts _stabbing at his eyeballs_.

"Nnnggh…blllaaa…_god_…" He slurs weakly when his world begins reeling, ready to lay the blame at the feet of so-named Vengeful Cosmic Arbiter before he remembers he's not sure he believes said Malicious Deity even exists. He decides his missing step-sib will do as a last minute replacement. He'd have been more than happy to begin profaning and disparaging her name, if not for the small matter of his stomach, which has just reported (with mild tedium) that the moment he opens his mouth, he's going to be revisiting every last bit of yesterday's dinner. It adds, with a touch of nasty glee, that this warning applies also to any attempts to stand, sit up, open his eyes, or breathe.

But that's only where his problems begin.

Derek and his stomach have a long, sordid history of Not Getting Along, so this is hardly anything out of the ordinary. In fact, lately, without anyone there to volunteer for the opportunity of keeping him distracted before hockey games, his stomach's been _particularly_ unforgiving, so he's prepared –mostly—for whatever it can dish out. (Literally, unfortunately.)

He's less equipped to handle the way his toes are aching like someone's taken a mallet to them, or the way his limbs feel rather more like limp, rubbery noodles than he's used to, or the way his vision keeps swimming in and out of focus at random intervals. The familiar nausea is just a _bonus_.

The bottom line is that he feels like he's been hit by a car –an _exploding_ car, so probably a Pinto—and he's certain enough of his own imminent demise that he almost phones Casey to rub in her face the fact that he _knew_ she'd eventually be the death of him. Again, however, this would entail some form or other of opening his mouth, which he's been specifically cautioned against, and it's not like she'd answer her phone, anyway, so why risk it?

(Ugh. _Casey_.)

Despite Tiny Jenny's misgivings, Derek remembers most of the previous evening, including but not limited to certain rather inglorious (non-)professions, as well as a handful of embarrassing reflections and a glut of Casey Avowals, which today he's prepared to adamantly deny ever happened. (As far as he's concerned, it _hadn't_.)

Also, despite her confidential revelations, Casey's continued, deliberate absence makes him, unsurprisingly, skeptical. Jenny's disclosure about Casey's reactions to his pranks, heartening though it may have been, wasn't tangible proof by any stretch of the imagination, and may in fact have been petty, purposefully misleading distortions of the truth crafted by the Enemy. He has no way of knowing whether or not Jenny'd been operating as an agent under the McDonald Tyrant's command, and as such, no way to distinguish (potential) fact from (more probably) fiction.

The past several weeks have taught him to err on the side of doubt, and that's exactly what he's planning to do now.

After, that is, he's had a couple of hours to reacquaint himself with his longest, truest, most unconditionally accepting friend: the toilet.

* * *

Two days after The Hangover from the Hell of Exploding Sledgehammers, when all yet remains quiet on the pranking front, Derek finds himself (at last) confronting the (increasingly real) possibility that the McDonald-Venturi War Machine has been permanently retired, that Casey's quite simply never going to retaliate, and that whatever tenuous (admittedly hostile), intermittent alliance had been slowly, painstakingly developing between them had been devastatingly and irreversibly ruptured.

Meaning, therefore, that he's finally, _finally_ won, finally _beaten_ her, forced her to give up, bow out, go into hiding –and it's becoming clearer to him by the day that victory this absolute can't be undone. He's never going to be able to fix what he's broken.

He meets this (dismal) likelihood with surprising sobriety, a cool dispassion borne of the lengthy adjustment period he'd been given to acclimatize himself to this new, less distracting, Casey-free reality.

(This is Derek doing what Derek does best: not caring, and liking it that way.)

It's not as if he'll never see her again; the nature of their affiliation ensures their paths will cross on national holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, possibly the Queen's Birthday, definitely when their younger sibling pops out of Casey's mother, and they'll deal with each other as the circumstances dictate. Perhaps out of sheer, ingrained habit, they'll fall back into their old combat routines, perhaps not. Maybe they'll adopt a shiny new approach to sharing the same space, possibly one which follows along more or less the same vein as their current situation: blatantly ignoring each other's existence.

Either way, he supposes, once their Shared Family Time has come to an end, so will their forced interaction, and then, he imagines, they'll be free to return to their previously scheduled lives, blissful in its lack of one another. No second thoughts, no regret.

The world will continue happening around them, night following day with vast, impersonal carelessness, moving their lives steadily, inexorably forward, and eventually they'll forget all about this chaotic, twisty, wholly fucked episode and the infuriating characters therein.

It'd been painful, life-changing, to let go of his mother, difficult to let go of Sally, harder still to leave his Smarti behind. But moving past Casey? The girl who'd made his life miserable and irritating and stupidly complicated from the moment she'd sashayed into his life with her big blue eyes and her bigger neuroses?

No sweat. Piece of cake.

He chucks the key to her dorm into a dumpster on his way back from class and doesn't look back.

(He does wonder, though, why it feels like his chest is caving in.)

* * *

Naturally (because what good is a universe that makes any sort of godforsaken _sense_?), this is when she starts hitting back.

_Hard_.

* * *

He likes Claire. She reminds him a little of Sally, with her sharp wit and her bright green eyes and her utter refusal to put up with his shit. In many ways, however, she's a radically different person. Claire's a brunette, voluptuous where Sally had been slender, petite where Sally'd been leggy, flighty and excitable (to the point of being possibly rabid) where Sally had been cool and poised. She's also a _hellcat_ in the sack, but he feels a comparison with Sally in this particular area would be, perhaps, somewhat unfair. He'd been relatively new to The Activity when Sally entered the picture, and anything lacking had likely been as much his fault as hers.

It's their third date in as many days, and the first time he's brought her back to his place; he doesn't have a problem with hers necessarily, but her roommate has startlingly few compunctions about walking into Claire's room without invitation, warning, or thought to the _private_ goings-on (potentially –or in his case, _definitely_) happening behind closed doors, which is…awkward. Usually, his philosophy tends toward 'the more, the merrier,' but Claire's roommate is very likely certifiable, has a disturbing love of All Things Barbara Streisand, and farts nearly as much as _Edwin_.

Also, Claire's roommate is a _dude_.

"How'd you get this sweet set-up?" Claire asks cheerfully, nibbling distractingly on his neck while he fishes in his pockets for his keys and she fishes in his boxers for something else entirely. He murmurs something vaguely intelligible about his athletic scholarship, but doesn't quite get to the part of the explanation concerning Gaels' starters having the option to live by themselves. "Hmmmm…that's veeery interesting." She says, clearly not listening. "I'd _kill_ to have my own place." She finds what she's looking for, and he makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, newly recovered keys falling from suddenly nerveless fingers. "So, Venturi," her tongue sweeps lightly along his jaw, and he _squeaks_ when her fingers come to life, "make your case now for why you aren't expendable, or forever hold your peace." He chuckles low in his throat and kisses her for a long moment, until at long last she pulls away with a wanton smile and stoops to retrieve his keys.

Waggling her eyebrows suggestively, she turns to open the lock, and he takes the opportunity to attack her neck, hands grasping and rough at her hips while she laughs and pushes through the door.

And then she freezes, laughter dying in a sharp, choking gasp of surprise. Curious, he lifts his head to see what she's seeing, and in the dazed, disbelieving instant it takes for him to understand what's happened here, Claire is just another girl. What was the word she'd just used?

Ah, yes. _Expendable_.

"Oh…oh, _my_." Claire's amusement is somewhat belied by the horrified expression on her face. She looks Very Worried, Indeed when she finally dares to face him. "Something you need to tell me, Venturi?"

In the space of a breath, a response is poised and ready for delivery.

"I, uh, have a thing for pink. Apparently." He takes a few seconds to appraise his Delightful New Surroundings, and then nods in absent affirmation, smiling hugely. "Pink…is definitely my color." Claire looks decidedly uneasy now.

(Meh.)

"I have a question for you, actually." She looks afraid. This is almost more hilarious than he can stand. "More of a request, now that I think about it." He grabs her hand, cradles it, looks her deep in the eyes. She softens somewhat, expectant. "When we're…y'know, _alone_, would you call me…" He stoops to whisper in her ear, "Tenderheart Bear?"

Derek doesn't think he's ever seen someone move so quickly; Claire's there one instant, vanished without a trace the very next. He shakes his head absently, already forgetting her, and shuts the door, leaning back against it and slumping to a sitting position, grinning like an idiot.

Later, he's going to be (_massively_) annoyed when he finds all of his décor out in the dumpster behind his building, but for the moment, he's content (more than content, actually –thrilled, elated, _euphoric_) to sit here and bask in the eye-searingly pink glow of the twelve-million or so 'Carebears' posters decorating his walls, 'My Little Pony' figurines arranged in elaborate dioramas on every available flat surface, and various 'Jem' fabric hangings draped elegantly over his couch, his chairs and tables, even his floor, a bright pink-and-purple beach towel laid out as a sort of tiny, tacky rug.

(_Casey_.)

It is a very, _very_ good evening.

* * *

There's something Not Quite Right today.

He's been on fire all afternoon; Coach Brax'd even generously promoted him from 'mindless waste of skin' to 'spineless worm,' which clearly means he's been doing something correctly. He hasn't missed a shot since practice started, which is pissing Harris (their starting goalie) off about as much as it's exciting his wings. Additionally, he's been practically _flying_ across the ice, virtually untouched for upwards of half an hour now, and though both his coach and his teammates seem thrilled with his initiative, his teamwork, and his spontaneously elevated skill, every time he comes off the ice for a breather, senior members of the team start acting…strangely.

They keep looking over at him, snickering, looking away again, occasionally bowing their heads and chattering quietly (like freaking _girls_), only pulling away to laugh obnoxiously at whatever had passed confidentially between them.

Pete and Aaron have been more openly behaving like assholes; actively ripping into him both on and off of the ice with crude insinuations about his sexuality. At first he hadn't minded so much; boys will be fucking idiots, after all, and as long as it's in the spirit of Dudely Competition, it wasn't really a big deal. Every guy on the team knows he has his pick of girls (and _has_ picked several), so he'd been certain the heckling had just been attempts to throw him off his game.

Until Samuelson calls him 'Dereka.'

Derek abandons the puck in favor of chasing after his wing, racing to catch up, and by the time Aaron realizes he's being tailed, Derek's slamming him into the boards.

"What the _hell _is going on?" He demands furiously, standing over his fallen comrade. From the box, Coach Brax's whistle sounds, a piercing trill that immediately redirects his attentions.

"Venturi! What in fuck's name are you tryin' to pull? If you're about to go ape-shit on another one of your teammates, I will eject your sorry ass from this program so fast you'll shit pucks!* I mean it, Venturi!" Unenthusiastically, Derek executes a tight little spin and bends to help Aaron to his feet. His teammate takes his offered hand with a bitter grin, and he follows Samuelson back to the bench, aware that his ass-chewing has only just begun.

* * *

He spends the rest of practice on the sidelines, fuming, dodging Coach Brax's fierce, unfriendly glowers and, at the same time, trying to tune out the increasingly infuriating behind-his-back giggling which is, frankly, getting out-of-fucking-hand. Gradually, even the other freshmen (second and third-stringers, all) start boldly asking him if he thinks maybe _they_ are 'dream date' material. (They do so as a small, huddled group, apparently mindful of the 'strength in numbers' principle.) Derek considers bludgeoning one or two of them to death with his stick to set an example until Brax catches his eye and stares him into submission.

This behavior persists well past ice time and follows him even on his way out of the locker room. Before he has time to fuck up his college hockey career even more spectacularly by flipping his shit and _decapitating_ someone, Josh intercepts him, tugging him sharply off of the Warpath, and insisting that he come along to 'that dreadful place of myth and legend' (the library) to 'divine the secrets of his misfortunes.'

Derek stares at Josh for a moment, uncomprehending, wondering in brief alarm if this means he should be worried Josh has gotten hold of some of Casey's more choice reading selections (ala _Sisters of the White Cave_), and furthermore, if he should prepare himself for more of those 'riveting discussions' about the merits of moths' blood as magical nourishment.

Finally, after he shakes himself out of his horrified stupor, he pauses to digest the fact that Josh is heading toward the _library_. Where Casey possibly still works -'possibly' because she hasn't been there the hundred or so times he's visited over the past few weeks –to check out books. For classes. Obviously.

It bothers him that he can still be freshly angry about this, and that he can _more _angry about this than the three straight hours of abuse he'd just endured from the entire Queens' hockey team.

"Let's do this at the student union instead, man. I can grab something to eat while we're there." Josh doesn't appear to pick up on the raw tension in his voice and doesn't question him, only nods and swiftly changes directions.

* * *

"_Casey_…" He growls darkly, and Josh slants him a look of shameless disbelief.

"Your _step-sis_ did this?" Josh proceeds to cackle like a lunatic. "Jesus, Venturi, what did you _do_ to her?" Derek cuts Josh a look of blackest contempt. He is Not Amused.

The effect of this look is, perhaps, somewhat diminished by the glittering image of himself on the computer screen beside his head, clearly artificially bejeweled and sporting a truly remarkable mop of long, wavy brown hair, out of which is springing all manner of tinsel and feathers and various sparkling -and occasionally winged- barettes. The effect is _further_ diminished when '_I'm a model, you know what I mean/And I do my little turn on the catwalk/Yeah on the catwalk, yeah_' blares from the tiny computer speakers at the precise instant Derek turns his glare on his friend, who may even now be _dying_ from laughter.

"Clearly I haven't done _enough_…" Derek reflects, and, giving Josh up for a lost cause, grimly begins inspecting the webpage. Artfully entitled 'Dereka's Dream Date,' it's an (admittedly) impressively elaborate (if not murder-inducing) set-up with his cell phone number splashed in shimmering text beneath the header, and a picture of himself from the seventh grade photo-shopped to high heaven, blown up, and slapped decisively onto the middle of the page, clearly meant to be the centerpiece of this travesty. In dazzling pink text just beneath this grotesque image, he discovers a brief profile detailing his romantic preferences ('strong men with tender hearts'), his hobbies ('crotcheting, ballet, serenading his lovers in the dark of night'), and, most importantly of all, his idea of the 'perfect date' ('moonlight, wine and chocolate, a man who isn't afraid to share his dreams').

And all of this to the tune of 'I'm Too Sexy,' which is currently looping back to the beginning of the track to begin his humiliation anew.

Derek's going to be hearing about this for _weeks_. Possibly even _months_. There'll be nowhere on campus he can go to escape the fallout of this ingenious little prank once word gets out (and it's apparently well on its way already).

So he knows he's definitely in trouble when, instead of the rage he's expecting to explode out of him and incinerate anyone in the immediate vicinity, he's…he's…_proud_ of Casey for the positively _nasty_ character of her revenge. More horribly still, he thinks he might be actually be _excited_ to see what else she's got in store for him. The anticipation may well kill him.

(He is a sick, sick man.)

* * *

Derek suspects Foul Play when a girl turns him down for the third time in as many hours, but it isn't until his academic advisor shows up in the middle of his Economics class with a campus police officer that he really begins to worry.

Ushered quietly from the audience hall, he's met with two bleak, disdainful stares.

"Um…" Derek shrugs, playing it cool and casual. "Do I get my phone call?"

"We need to…you see, we need to…ask you some questions." His counselor stammers, somewhat worriedly, glance flicking back and forth between himself and the officer.

"Look, if this is about the website, then I have nothing to do with—" The police officer unceremoniously unfurls the rolled paper in his hand, which Derek hadn't bothered to notice until this moment. His jaw falling slack cuts him short.

Derek's face is on it, and he's looking particularly cut-ass rugged, if he does say so himself. He recognizes the picture as one Casey had taken after Sally'd left for Vancouver (_'One day,'_ _she'd said, 'I'll be able to look back on your misery and laugh. Until then, if you need me, I'm here for you.'_). He looks unkempt, unwashed, and generally unsavory. The Playboy in his hands probably doesn't help matters much.

And the huge text inked over the image in stark, bold, blocky font _definitely_ doesn't help. It reads as follows:

'_Warning! This boy slept with me and didn't tell me he had HERPES! Be warned, be safe, be smart! Don't be the next in Derek Venturi's long list of victims!'_

"Oh, Case…" He murmurs, dragging his palm over his face with a wry smile. He could get into serious trouble for this one if he doesn't tread carefully, he thinks, now thoroughly in awe of the lengths he's managed to get Casey to go to in the name of vengeance.

"You realize this is a serious situation, don't you?" The stern officer begins stiffly rolling the smallish poster back into a smaller paper scepter. Derek slides him a winning grin, nods, and crosses his arms, affecting nonchalance.

"Yes, officer, I do." He shakes his head, feigning casual disappointment. "And that situation is that there's just not enough of me to go around. It's unfortunate –tragic, actually, though I assure you I'm doing everything in my power to remedy the situation." The cop's lips purse unpleasantly. Beside him, Derek's advisor shifts nervously. "Some girls just can't handle my selflessness, though, the poor things. They wanna keep me to themselves –can you believe it? Totally selfish."

"Listen here, wise ass. These allegations—"

"Are _completely _false, officer. You know how ruthless the ladies can be when they're jealous." Derek's flawless logic doesn't appear to be reaching either of the men before him. "It's understandable that they can't get enough of me, but I'm just as outraged as you are that they'd stoop to this level to get my attention. It's shameful."

He supposes he shouldn't be surprised that the cop responds to this, his most inspired performance, by cuffing him and frog-marching him out of the building.

* * *

It takes nearly _all_ of his (substantial) intellect to convince Officer Scary-When-Angry of his innocence without naming names or inadvertently implicating Casey. In the end, he offers to have himself tested at the local clinic and thereafter willingly turn the results over to the campus police department if, in return, they promise not to pursue any sort of investigation for what Derek insists is just a harmless (though definitely vindictive) prank.

He even volunteers to sweep the campus for the posters and take them down himself –an oh-so-generous offer he makes without full knowledge of how incredibly _thorough_ Casey'd been in putting them up. The damn posters are in every building, plastered deliberately in the most prominent, difficult-to-reach places possible, and it takes him the better part of the following day to peel them all off.

By the time he finally finishes, he still can't decide whether protocol demands that he begin planning to wreak his unholy retribution (just in case, he's already laying the groundwork in his head), or if this 'poster' business (the third of her pranks in this remarkable series) makes them somehow…_even_. He'd made three separate pranking trips to her dorm, she'd publicly humiliated him three times in kind.

Is this the point where they meet on neutral ground and come to some (likely only temporary) kind of…cessation of hostilities?

It aggravates him that he's even _considering_ stepping lightly, trying to feel Casey out for some sign of how he should proceed when _she's _the one who's taken their game to this whole new, undeniably spiteful level. _Her_ pranks aren't going to be quick fixes; he's justifiably concerned for his social life (not _worried_, necessarily; there's no irreversible damage, he doesn't think), and he's probably going to have to spend the next few days lying low, making himself inconspicuous and gritting his teeth in silence during practice.

If Casey would just…follow her script, show up on his doorstep with smug triumph making her haughty and overconfident, maybe gloat a bit for good measure, it'd be so much _easier_ to know what to do. But she _hasn't_, and he can't Push if she refuses to be physically present to Pull, and the fact remains that in spite of her sudden, brutal reentry into their battle, he still hasn't seen anymore of her than he had when she was pretending he didn't exist, so how the hell is he supposed to know where they stand, what boundaries are okay to cross and which aren't? How can she reasonably expect him to know if he needs to be furiously upping the ante or…or…doing something drastic?

Ultimately, he convinces himself (with effort) that patience is the better (if stupidly frustrating) part of valor, figuring that waiting a few more days for his cue couldn't hurt. If she hadn't delivered one by then…well, he'd cross that bridge if he came to it.

In the meantime, he's got to figure out some way to get another copy of Casey's dorm key.

* * *

A couple days later, Josh pops over and convinces him to tag along to a party at a sister university frat house, citing 'Emergency Rep Maintenance' as his compelling incentive when Derek initially turns him down.

"All the Gaels'll be there," Josh regales him, "and Harris tells me there're _four_ kegs. Plus," he adds, with an air of unquestionable authority, "babes. Lots and lots of babes. Pete n' Brewer both say we'll be elbow deep in 'em." He looks at Derek seriously, "_Elbow deep_, dude." He doesn't question how Josh is able to keep a straight face for this dramatic reiteration. He's had enough experience with a Papadapolis who shall remain nameless to know that there are some people beyond the scope of human understanding. "And this's supposed to be some sort of mixer thing for Queens and St. Lawrence, so if you snag a Lawrence lady, you'll be fostering inter-school cooperation and the spirit of, uh…casual, no-strings sex."

"That's inspiring, man." Derek runs a hand through his hair and fondly shakes his head at his friend. He supposes it can't hurt to put in some face time and maybe hook up with a girl or two to begin salvaging his damaged reputation, and (assuming Josh's information is correct), since there're gonna be a bunch of girls there unaffiliated with Queens, most of them won't have seen and/or heard about his infamous webpage, or his equally notorious 'Derek Venturi has Herpes' posters, which should increase his chances by a fair amount.

Whatever happens, he figures it has to at least beat moping around his empty apartment, watching the Maple Leafs run themselves into the ground for the…oh, three-hundredth consecutive season.

"Count me in."

* * *

For the first hour or so, Derek wanders around the fraternity with Josh and Harris, touring the house, checking out the girlish fare, throwing back what tastes suspiciously like the cheapest beer in Canada, and occasionally stopping to chat with teammates.

By the time they drift into the area of the house where Samuelson's (hopefully) striking out with a brunette he's chatting up (a brunette with a _truly_ spectacular ass) beside the staircase, Derek's got the female half of the party-goers sorted into their appropriate '_yes_,' 'probably,' 'if very, _very_ drunk,' and 'only-if-she-pays-me' categories, and he's busy making cuts and fine-tuning his selections when Josh catches his gaze with a deeply unsettling grin.

"Hey, D."

"…hey, Josh."

"Stone fox at nine o' clock." Derek lifts a brow and sweeps his gaze left, where Aaron's hovering over whatever unfortunate girl had managed to catch his eye. He skips right over her and turns back to Josh. "Looks like they're hitting it off." He says it like he expects Derek to _care_ for some reason.

"Sucks for her." He murmurs.

"You should get in there, man. She looks more your type, anyway."

"No thanks. I'm not touching anything Samuelson's so much as _breathed_ on. I'd like to _not_ be the one who finds out how sloppy his seconds are." He shudders at the thought. "Besides," he chuckles at the ludicrousness of his own proposition, "what if Aaron's finally decided to settle down and make some unlucky lady his 'official gal-pal?'" The likelihood of this being true is essentially nil, but it makes for an amusing thought nevertheless.

"Dude, just because there's a goalie doesn't mean ya' can't score." Derek's eyebrows furrow in shock at his fellow before he starts laughing in earnest (hey, why not? he's had a _great_ week), and then, just for the hell of it, he pans back to Samuelson's 'gal-pal' –and breaks out at once in a cold sweat. With a queasy feeling, he realizes he _knows_ that ass, those legs, that brown, brown hair, that lilting, musical laugh.

It's Casey.

Josh claps him hard on the shoulder,

"_Told ya' _she's your type." Derek can't even be bothered to be angry with Josh. As if hypnotized, he's moving toward her before he can stop himself, Josh's rumbling laughter following him all the way across the room.

* * *

"Well, if it isn't the Once and Future Keener," he sounds off, eyes glued on Samuelson, who appears displeased with Derek's interruption, if the warning, belligerent cast his face has assumed is anything to go by.

Then she's spinning (he's beginning to think he's really gone mad in the Casey-less interim, because it feels very much to him like the movement is taking forever, almost as if his –apparently bastard-ish—cinematographer has decided that now would be an appropriate time to reduce the frame-rate, to slow-mo the action for dramatic effect), and her comeback is instinctive, immediate, exciting in a way that's altogether impossible to ignore,

"Says the boy making the literary reference." And then her eyes are filling up his entire world, all of it; Aaron and Josh and the myriad party-goers and the staircase behind her and the whole huge frat house surrounding them quite simply…vanish. (Later, he's going to wonder about this peculiar phenomenon, with equal amounts apprehension and alarm.)

"Der…" Initial astonishment at his presence transforms swiftly into guarded hostility in the time it takes her to mutter the first syllable of his name. She quickly redirects. "What do _you_ want?" She nearly snarls, and the sensational familiarity of her antipathy (of _this _antipathy, specially for _him_) is giving him the _worst_ stomachache.

"Good to see you, too, step-sis." He imagines he can _hear_ her teeth grinding together. Over her shoulder, he spares Samuelson one meaningful, fleeting glance, and the measly half-an-instant it takes his senior teammate to connect the dots (Casey-plus-Derek-equals-Leave) and promptly Abandon Ship makes him almost giddy.

After that, the world snicks quietly back into place, and it's him and Casey and enough beautiful antagonism to instigate the next phase of the Hundred Years' War.

"Fancy seeing you here, where the keener elite dare not tread." He chuckles meanly at the way she silently seethes. "They used to have _standards_ for invitation to these illustrious shindigs." God, he even enjoys the look of dubious shock she gifts him in the aftermath of (he can only suppose) his shiny new vocabulary.

"It's depressing, isn't it? These days they'll just let _anyone_ in." He feels his grin nocking up far past the limits of propriety.

"We usually at least try to be sure that the chicks are intelligent enough to stay away from the Samuelson VD Breeding Ground."

"One, I doubt seriously there's a very strict 'intelligence' criteria for the girls at these types of parties, and two, Aaron just wanted to talk to me, Derek."

He takes a step toward her, suddenly more glad of his height than he's ever had cause to be. She doesn't cower, doesn't retreat, stays firmly planted, and the adrenaline starts pumping. (_Yes_.)

"You're wrong. You clearly have no _idea_ what he wants." His arm shoots out beside her head, smacks resoundingly against the wall.

"And I suppose _you do_." She spits in challenge. Derek leans in without a second thought, heady from her nearness, exhilarated by the furious blush of her cheeks. (He was a fool to think that he'd ever be able to ignore her, that he could ever live without this electrifying contest.)

"He wants _you_." The last word is an abrasive whisper against her ear. _Against _it; his lips move over the lobe and his stomach tightens at the inadvertent contact. (He doesn't immediately shift away in revulsion, either; he's got _weeks_' worth of uncomfortable touching to squeeze in.)

"What…what are you talking about?" Her hand is laid flat against his chest, as if she's about to push him back. (But she _doesn't_.) "He—I—we were just having a conversation." She maintains, resolve shimmering in her eyes. (Even though her breathing is erratic and disjointed.)

"Maybe _you_ were just having a conversation," he concedes, and deliberately flicks a stray wisp of hair out of her eyes, "but the only reason _I_ ever bother to have a 'conversation' with a girl is because I know if I listen to her long enough, she'll hear out a few of _my_ ideas—"

"Don't be disgusting." She snaps, boldly leaning toward him. His fingers ball convulsively into a fist against the wallpaper. "And don't try to drag all boys down to _your_ level. There _are_ some who are decent and good and are capable of and interested in having conversations for their own sake. Not _everyone_ is as repulsive as you." She's _deluded_ if she thinks there's _any_ boy (who isn't gay, her father, Edwin, or his dad) who can JUST have a conversation with her, absent ulterior motives.

"Casey, Casey, Casey," he breathes, and the taste of her name on his tongue (while she's here, before him) dissolves weeks' worth of tension (and also, for a faltering moment, the subject of the argument), easy as that. "Sweet, simple Casey." The gravity of her orbit pulls him irresistibly toward her, until they're so close that her automatic rejoinder (his name, the invisible tether binding them inescapably, inevitably together) hums against his lips. It's too close, menacingly intimate, and the glimmering emotion in her eyes is edging neatly past Uncomfortable and currently setting a course for Dread. He doesn't care; he refuses to yield an inch until he's impressed upon her with perfect clarity that he's going to exist in her space whether she likes it or not.

His malicious bravado is belied by the unsteadiness of his hand as he lays it against her collar, thumb trembling as it climbs the elegant slope of her neck, and he has no idea what he's doing (he never, ever seems to when she's involved); all he knows is Casey is warm and soft and _here_, and that he hasn't felt this alive in what feels like forever.

He catches her gaze, drops her name wonderingly, curious to know if she's feeling this, too, this aberrant, feverish intensity, but instead her eyes widen, scurry away from his, and then she _does _try to shove away from him, making a move to slip past the barrier of his arms, and it just slips out—

"Why're you 'having a conversation' with Samuels, anyway? Won't your oaf be jealous?" She locks into place with a baffled expression pinching her features together.

"…what?" He only continues to stare at her in challenge. "Are you serious? Do you not remember me _telling_ you I broke up with Truman?" It's his turn to look confused. "Not that it was any business of yours in the first place, and it's not any moreso _now_, and even if we _were_ still together, that doesn't give you the right to _police_ my every interaction with the opposite sex; you're not my _father_—" She stops, brought up short at the unwitting allusion to their familial ties, but he hardly even notices. He feels like his head is filling with air; he's light-headed, dizzy, suddenly unsteady on his own feet. He shuffles an additional (perilous) few inches forward, and he pushes the idle hand at her throat back into the satin plush of her hair, his fingers loosely tangled in the dark tumble at her nape.

"You're not seeing Dmitri." Derek says wonderingly, elated for reasons he has no interest exploring.

"Dmitri? What –oh, _Dmitri_. No, I'm not seeing Dmitri –which come to think of it is _also_ none of your business—"

"None of my business?" He fumbles for the right words for several agitated seconds before he finally settles on, "Case, he _hit_ you." He can't stop his fingers from absently caressing her jaw. (Granted, he doesn't really _try_ to stop them...)

"It was an _accident_, Derek. He was making an admittedly high-handed and misguided –though not wholly unwelcome—attempt to defend me. From _you_, if you'll recall. Or have you conveniently forgotten the part of that wonderful evening where you were a vile, unspeakable _ass_? And anyway, he apologized. Several times. At length. It was kind of cute, actually—"

"There is nothing 'cute' about a two-ton bear with a unibrow, McDonald."

"De-_rek_," his heart _stops beating_ for an instant, and he hadn't realized he'd missed even _that_ so immensely until this moment, "would you please quit putting him down already? Unlike you, Dmitri is a sweet, interesting, _decent_ person. And he gets it bad enough from Jen as it is; he could certainly stand someone being nice to him..." She murmurs unthinkingly, almost as an afterthought.

"Jen?" He pauses to shake his head. "Tiny, bitchy, lives with you?" She nods in confirmation, and he decides he's liking this Jenny character more and more every minute. "How the hell does she even _know_ Dmitri?" Casey appears reluctant to say anything more, conflicted about whether or not it's her place to divulge this information. (To _him_.)

"Well, he was…around a lot for a while; he came by to apologize to me for the… the incident, several times a day, but I was rarely in and I guess he decided to wait around for me to get back a few times, and Jen kept him company once or twice and he…well, I suppose eventually he developed a bit of a crush on her—" Derek laughs. Uproariously.

"Oh. Oh, that is _priceless_." She's immediately annoyed.

"You know about…?"

"Her preference for the ladies? Yes, yes I do." Annoyance becomes amused suspicion in the space of a wink.

"You hit on her, didn't you?"

"One and only time I've ever been shot down. There was clearly only one explanation."

"'One and only time…?' Now _that_ is just preposterous. What about Sandra? And Sadia? And _Sally_ the first hundred or so times you asked her out? And Candice and Jessie and Mia and—"

"Okay, okay, point made. Jeez, Case. You keeping count?"

"I like to keep track of your failures. It brings me joy."

"Charming." Her grin is sardonic and cruel. He decides he likes this very, very much.

And then an old, blue journal flashes in his mind's eye, an unnatural bend to its spine where ink-blackened pages had once made it full, and where now there was nothing but space, a gaping, empty wound, festering with sharp, angry purpose.

His cheer blackens perceptibly.

"Kind of hard to keep track of my failures when you aren't there to witness them, I bet." His fingers sweep thoughtfully across the back of her neck, and she aims a look up at him that can't decide whether it wants to be panic, disbelief, or outrage.

"I…I have better things to do than baby-sitting you, Derek." He smiles a predatory little smile and doesn't fight the sadistic urge that steals into his brain and encourages him to back her into a corner, trap her, _hurt_ her, even though (a distant part of his mind cautions) that's precisely what'd gotten him into this mess in the first place. "And don't pretend like you're not _happy_ to have me out of your life." Beneath the words is a thin thread of sullen resentment, so delicately insinuated he nearly doesn't catch it.

But he does, and reads it as the challenge it plainly is.

"Just as happy as _you_ are to have me out of yours." He hedges.

"Well, that's…that's good. Because I _am_ happy." His jaw tightening urges her on. "I haven't been called 'grubber' or 'Klutzilla' in _weeks_, and no one steals my lunch or my friends and makes it seem like it was my own fault, and there hasn't been anyone to tell embarrassing stories about me in class, and it's been…it's been so _peaceful_ not having to stress out about every stupid, horrible little thing you do _just_ to make my life miserable." She gets in his face, shakes herself loose of the fingers at her nape. "I've outgrown you and your sick, idiotic games, Derek."

He laughs at her. Darkly, a hint of dangerous desperation in it.

"That's rich, coming from the girl who's been pranking me all freaking week." Her cheeks pink in embarrassment, but he gently guides her face back to his when she tries to look away. "It's a cute new routine, Case, I'll admit. But the fact of the matter is you can't _stand _it when I get my way, even if it's got nothing to do with you. You can't stand that I win, even when I lose, you hate that things always just…work out for me; it _offends_ your ridiculous sense of justice, makes you question the worth of your small, compulsively ordered little world." And then, "I _knew_ you'd have to fight back eventually, I _knew_ it."

It sounds like a good argument, but he's mostly just making it up on the spot, even though he's beginning to suspect (from the ever-changing play of expressions on her face) that he's hitting pretty close to home. Which is, of course, _excellent_.

What she says next, however, is decidedly _un_-excellent.

"Did you ever consider maybe you're just not as _important_ to me as all that? What on earth gave you the impression that you influence the course of my life, my feelings or goals or decisions, in any way?"

Derek almost falls for her bluff. He almost steps back, runs from her, and goes to puke out on the lawn. (Almost.) But he _knows better_, in a flash of sickening insight.

He knows, because Casey -always- knows _exactly_ what to say to him to throw him off his game. It's why she's the only one he enjoys harassing –because she's the only one worthy to compete with him, the only one who makes it worthwhile. Casey's studied him just as intensely, just as thoroughly, knows all of his most intimate weaknesses –if he didn't affect her at all, then why the hell go through all the trouble?

"Don't play dumb, princess. We both know I'm the most important person in your pathetic life." She opens her mouth to protest, and he cuts her off. "Everything you've done since your family came to live with mine, _everything_, from the fighting back to the pretending to be above it all and now this cold shoulder bit –it's all a reaction to _me_, a reflection of you changing yourself to live in _my world_." Derek feels the truth of it in his very bones, and her gaping silence only confirms it.

For a moment Casey vainly grasps for an objection, and just as he's about to head her off (again), her eyes widen in shock at something beyond him and, before he can throw a glance over his shoulder to see what's coming, she grabs him by the lapels of his jacket and jerks him to one side, just in time to avoid a pair of drunk, tussling idiots. The duo crashes, laughing, into the wall he'd previously had her caged against, and he lets her lead him safely out of range, depositing one hand low on her back, where the line of her spine meets the curve of her ass, the gesture unconsciously possessive.

It doesn't seem to escape Casey's notice, though, and something in her eyes communicates how _wrong_ this all is, and then—

"You're my _brother_, Derek." Softly, gravely.

"I'm _not_ your brother. I will _never_ be your _brother_, Case." Damning silence. "I could never be related to someone so difficult and high-maintenance and overly-dramatic and prissy and do-goody and—" He hadn't even been aware she'd been holding a drink until she throws it in his face (he has _got_ to start paying attention to the things people are carrying); the bitter, distinctively alcoholic liquid slides down his chin and dribbles all over the front of his shirt and jacket while she glowers at him, the bright red cup in her hand falling slowly back to her side.

Quietly, his grip begins to slacken. Seeing this as a signal for escape, she shifts back and starts to retreat, and that's when he grabs her, ducking quickly, deftly to fold her at the waist over his shoulder, and without pausing to think about his actions, he marches through the open patio doors, out into the spacious fraternity backyard, and she senses what's coming before he's anywhere near his target.

"Derek! De-_REK_! Put me DOWN!" Conscious of the length of her skirt, her legs are faithfully still, but she has no reservations about slapping enthusiastically (though uselessly) at his back, threatening him with all manner of painful death in vibrant, glowing detail if he does what she thinks he's going to do, and, smilingly, having by now reached his destination (the lip of the swimming pool), he does it anyway.

* * *

Casey hits the water with an anticlimactic splash, which she then proceeds to make up for by flailing like the crazy person she definitely is, kicking and twisting frantically while he rolls his eyes, unimpressed with her performance.

Until she manages to surface briefly, anyway, eyes wide with panic, crying out to him for help before she slides back under. In the incredulous second it takes for him to figure out she _can't swim_ (which makes _no_ sense, because her best friend and _next door neighbor_ had had a swimming pool), he's stripping off his jacket and shirt and jumping in after her, cursing when he remembers (too late to do anything about it) he's still wearing his shoes.

Derek reaches her in seconds, wasting no time slinging an arm across her waist and pulling her to safety, a task made somewhat more challenging than necessary by her persistent thrashing (honestly, does she have to be difficult about _everything_?).

As soon as they break the surface, ripping free of the claustrophobic vacuum of the pool, she starts coughing violently, and he unthinkingly (if somewhat guiltily) raps her on the back, helping her to expel water. He does his best to remain silent when she does so on his shoulder. Holding her carefully at arms' length, he propels them easily toward the nearest edge of the pool, gliding to a halt when his foot finds purchase on the lowest submerged rung of the exit ladder, supporting her lightly at the waist (thumbs absently rubbing circles into her hips) while she recovers.

"You…" She sputters, "You _jer_—" She's cut off by another round of coughing, and he shakes his head ruefully as he pats her back once, twice more. "You unthinkable _monster_! What if I'd _drowned_!" Her hands curl into fists and pound into him with surprising force.

Derek opts to go on the defensive.

"How the hell was I supposed to know you couldn't _swim_?" Her eyes flash up at him. "What kind of freak can't even tread water?"

"We live in _Canada_, you retard. We're _skaters_, not swimmers!" She chuckles, a touch hysterically. He blinks at her, speechless. "I couldn't _breathe_, you stupid, stupid idiot!" The instant she tries to draw back, away from him, he decides he isn't ready to let her go. She looks just about furious enough to run away and leave this argument where it stands (unresolved), and recent evidence suggests this means she'll be Mysteriously Evaporating into thin air the instant she's out of sight.

Unless he stops her.

Derek locks his hands at her waist and kicks against the rough, slippery wall, dragging her with him as they drift unstoppably toward the center of the pool.

There is no way he could possibly have anticipated that this impulsive decision would result in Casey squeaking softly in surprise and then promptly _gluing_ herself to his person.

She shoots him a weak glare and he goggles at her dumbly.

* * *

Something's happening here. He's not sure what, exactly, but he knows it's big and he thinks there's a good chance that Casey's bare, trembling thighs, fastened at his waist (where her already short skirt is anticipating the promotion to _Obscene_), may have a little something to do with it.

"Derek," she says, and he meets her gaze with a piercing look that appears to be making her nervous. (_Good_, he thinks; if there's going to be a battle, he'd rather have the higher ground.) "Why…" She chokes on her resolve, glances away, lip rolled between her teeth, suddenly unsure. Vulnerable. "Why did you—"

"Look at me, Case." He commands softly, and she obeys without question. Which he's pretty sure she's never done before. (It's how he knows that this…is the _Twilight Zone_.)

"Let me go, Derek." She says, and because this isn't Opposite Land, where the step-brother her mother inflicted upon her all those many long years ago actually _listens_ to what she tells him, his grip tightens.

"No." She works the Fish-Lips for several frantic seconds. Fresh anger begins to thaw the ice of her expression.

"What-why-what do you mean '_no_?'"

"I think the concept's pretty clear, Case."

"You can't just say no!"

"It _is_ puzzling then, isn't it? That I just _did_?"

"_Let – me – go!_"

"Well," he leans in daringly close, "if you insist."

He drops her (again).

The instant his hands fall away from her, she slips under (again), without time enough to so much as scream or hold her breath. Floundering desperately, she resurfaces with an indignant shriek and proceeds to wrap herself around him like a wet, trembling cat, grappling for purchase as he starts laughing and draws her back into his embrace.

When she gets her breathing back under control (a process which involves a great deal of coughing and quivering and Casey's breasts heaving into his chest), she carefully unwinds herself, laying her hands at either of his shoulders while he holds her at the waist, eyeing her critically.

"De-_rek_…" She sounds more than just slightly peeved.

"Ca-_sey_…" It has to be the playful, teasing way he says it, he thinks, that forces the laughter from her. Her spontaneous humor only lasts a moment before she firmly snuffs it out, before she's visibly wrestling for control over her expression, but it's apparently just long enough for his brain to commit treason by suggesting he probably enjoys the sound of her joy more than anything else in the world.

Then, suddenly,

"I'm not—I _refuse_ to just…_forgive you_." She ducks her gaze away (again), upset, furious, conflicted. "You were…you were so _awful_ to me, Derek." The tears appear unannounced, sliding mutely over her cheeks while he clings to her, hands stiff at her sides. "I decided after Truman I'd _never_ let anyone treat me like that again –not even…not even fam…_you_."

Derek experiences an instant of such ugly, bitter regret that he can find no words to break through the angry silence that follows. Her shoulders hunch awkwardly as she gives him her profile, and gradually her expression hardens, darkens, eventually fixing there.

Then she takes in a long, shuddering breath, abruptly meets his eyes, and for one delirious moment he thinks she's going to _kiss_ him—

"Apologize to me." He swallows his unsettling insight and sets his jaw.

(This water is like…a _thousand degrees_.)

"That's not going to happen." She immediately starts wriggling, trying to distance herself from him again, and in frustration, he pulls her willfully back to him. "_Case_."

"_What_, you creep?" Honestly, he's got no idea. He's navigating uncharted territory here, and he's fresh out of improvisations. In the intervening space where some form of Response belongs, he slides one hand up along her spine until it rests neatly between her shoulderblades, and he considers her with a sober calm he definitely doesn't feel.

Casey baffles him, annoys, provokes, and infuriates him; she makes him feel out of his depth, sinking in her presence, like a man drowning. At the same time, everything is so perfectly clear when she's near; sharper, concentrated, intensified.

There's always been something about her, something sickly fascinating and impossible to dismiss. Something…madly, stupidly compelling. Not enjoyable, he assures himself quickly, or pleasant or anything close to anything other than massively annoying and completely insane, but he's never been able to deny that the Something is _there_, and from the moment he'd first glimpsed it (totally by mistake), he hadn't been able to look away again.

In the dementedly abrupt way of dawning epiphany, with its cold disinterest and offensive lack of ceremony, it occurs to him, while she's glaring at him in a way that suggests she'd be quite happy if someone gutted him, that he begins and ends with Casey McDonald; she's the reason he's _here_, in _college _(or anyway, at _this_ college), when he could be fulfilling his (infinitely more inviting) Snow Bum dreams, the motivation behind every move makes (the mantra in his head is as follows: 'what would _Casey_ want me to do?' –and he always, faithfully takes the opposite action), the freaking Keener-filled center of his whole goddamn world, and he figures this (gruesome) acknowledgment probably means he's finished pretending otherwise.

He can't lose her again. He _can't_. (_Please_, he thinks, and hates himself for it.)

And then (by sudden force of a newly sympathetic universe) there it is, clear as day.

He knows what he has to do to make this right.

(This is obviously supposed to be some sort of poetic justice. Had he said 'sympathetic?' Obviously, he meant 'fucking _sadistic_.')

"Casey," he says again, deliberately this time, by way of warning.

Derek allows her precisely one heartbeat to grasp his meaning before he pulls her to him.

And hugs her.

He fits himself to her, awkwardly at first, clumsy and stiff from the lack of affectionate experience with this particular specimen of Girl. Gradually, though, unconsciously, the anxiety begins to dissolve, and he curls drowsily into her warmth, arms banding across her back, fingers gripping gently at the fabric of her blouse, face sinking into the damp tangle of her dark hair. Casey's quiet, and soft, and statue still, all of which frightens him more than he he's willing to admit. He tenses inadvertently, on edge all over again, readying to throw himself away from her, and of course (of _course_), that's when she finally relaxes, sagging against him as her arms wind around his neck and the smooth line of her body presses gingerly along the hard planes of his. She sighs softly, and her breath tickles at his nape.

He panics, just a little, barely at all, and forces his heart back down his throat.

Then,

"How's this for a 'Feel Good Family Moment?'" He wonders dryly, and feels her sigh of exasperation shudder through him. He's busy being enormously distracted by this phenomenon, so he flinches in (pained) shock when she flicks his ear. _Hard_.

"_Ow_! Freaking _hell_, Casey, what was that for?" She tugs lightly on the smarting lobe, and then brushes a delicate kiss against his temple. He forgets, for a brief moment, to breathe.

"My amusement. Or payback -you know, evening the score or something. Whichever you prefer." He's got a sarcastic crack on the tip of his tongue, but by this point she's drawn back slightly, and she's dreadfully close (_again_), and she's wearing this impish little grin, and he thinks there's a fair chance he's going to throw caution, sense, and a good number of other Probably Important and Perfectly Sound disincentives right out the window, that he's going to pull her close again and—

"Hey, Venturi!" Derek jerks around guiltily, partly dislodging Casey in the process, to face his addressor. He finds himself staring up at Samuelson, who's got his arm wrapped around a giggling girl he doesn't know, beaming smugly, knowingly. He's about to say something Very Impolite to his wing when he realizes Aaron's not alone. The pool has acquired a ring of alternately curious and amused spectators, scattered here and there in couples or small groups, plastic red cups flashing at him from every direction. Something hard drops into his gut and he feels suddenly quite sick. (How could he have forgotten they were at a party full of_ people_, thrill-seeking university kids ready to follow the action wherever it went?)

And that's not even the worst part.

Shamelessly adding insult to his PDA injury, Samuelson's tipsy brunette bends at the rim and notifies him in a conspiratorial whisper (loud enough for everyone gathered to hear) that there's still an open bedroom upstairs.

Casey re-stiffens at the same time he does.

It's time to get _out_ of this pool.

Immediately, he paddles for the ladder, releasing her when she starts to climb out, eyes carefully averted to avoid any accidental flashes of Casey's long, bare legs. When he follows her, he sweeps his gaze out amongst the onlookers, some of who are filtering away, bored of this scene, and others who are actively pretending they weren't watching. Still others brazenly wink and call vulgar encouragements to him, leering at Casey as she stands, shivering, arms crossed, wet clothes mostly transparent and leaving oh-so-very-little to the imagination.

As soon as he's on solid ground again, he shakes himself a bit to shed some of the excess water, and then retrieves his shirt and jacket from where he'd thrown them. He thrusts the shirt at her, rudely.

"Here," he offers gruffly, making an offhanded gesture indicating she should put it on. She looks at him in incredulous disgust.

"You spilled on this shirt, Derek." He doesn't point out that _she'd _been the one who'd spilled on the shirt.

"Casey," he growls.

"_Fine_," she snaps, snatching the garment from his hand. "Although now I'm going to smell like chlorine _and_ beer. Fantastic." Grumbling, she starts unbunching the fabric. He's somehow managed to forget how ridiculously _Casey_ she is, though, and how clumsy this requires her to be. No sooner had she started pulling the shirt over her head than she tripped over her own feet, faltering a step and stubbing her toe and beginning to tip sideways, but he's there an instant later, hands firm at her waist, righting her.

"Der—"

"People are staring, Case." His hands slide firmly up over her ribcage, twitching to an abrupt halt before he arrives anywhere _near_ Dangerous Territory. "Put the shirt on." She finishes wriggling into it, and he steps around her, hand placed lightly at her back to steer her toward the back gate. This time, she lets him lead her, head bowed in mortification. Samuelson waves goodbye to him as he pushes her over the threshold separating the rest of the world from the party.

As soon as they're by themselves,

"Oh! I came with Alice—"

"I'm driving you home." He tells her evenly, tone brooking no argument. But this is Casey, and their only form of communication is argument, which effectively renders said tone utterly useless.

"Oh, no. Not after you harassed me and _threw_ me in the pool!" He groans.

"Come on, Case. If it makes you happy, we can think of this as my punishment, but let's get _out_ of here. Or do you _want_ to go back in there soaking wet?" She sulks, defeated.

"Oh, fine." And she marches off ahead of him.

He definitely doesn't stare at the way the wet clothes cling to various parts of her anatomy. That would hardly be brotherly of him.

* * *

There's an eerily familiar quality to the silence that accompanies them on the drive to her place, made all the more uncomfortably pronounced by the number of times she tries to pretend not to be furtively stealing glances at him in all his shirtless glory (it's at least as many times as he Doesn't check her out in his –now sopping—shirt).

They do have a brief, heated argument over what radio station they should be listening to, which is ultimately settled when Casey slaps his hand away from the dial and resentfully flicks it off, pouting faintly as she crosses her arms and sticks her tongue out at him.

Damn it all if isn't endearing.

It's a short hop; maybe fifteen minutes from Greek Row to her dormitory, and when they arrive, Casey wastes no time climbing out of the Prince.

She cracks the passenger door open soundly and swings her knees to one side, and in a rush of panic he has no time to dwell on, he grabs her arm, holding her fast.

He realizes quite suddenly he's afraid she's going to walk right back out of his life just as suddenly as she'd accidentally reentered it. That he's going to have to readjust all over again to her absence. It is not a happy prospect.

Still…short of begging (which he will_ not_ be doing, thanksverymuch), he can't think of anything to say to make her stay.

But if this's gonna be the last time he's to see her for the rest of the semester (thinkthink_think_)—"Case," he fumbles, beginning to sweat, and doesn't know how to proceed. But she seems to know what's on his mind, anyway, and he's never been less annoyed with her than this moment.

"Since the likelihood of this shirt _ever_ being clean again if I give it back to you now is virtually…well, non-existent, I'm gonna take it with me and wash it." Her eyes flit briefly to the fingers wrapped carefully above her elbow. "I'll drop by before your next game to give it back." She tells him, and he doesn't bother to quash the pleased thrill that burns through him. She's promising to see him again, to see him again _soon_, and probably also to help keep him distracted before his game –something he's been responsible for doing himself (for the first time ever) too long now.

Derek smiles at her, really, candidly _smiles_ at her, hopelessly, overwhelmingly elated. She catches her breath.

"Um. That's…that's not…I'm not saying that I'm—"

"Get outta the car, Space Case." And she does, swiftly, without a backward glance.

* * *

(*I used to take my kid brother to hockey practice, and it became obvious after the first two or three practices that 'I'll make you shit pucks' was something of a ubiquitous, all-purpose threat for his coach. I always hoped I'd get to use it someday. It figures I finally get the opportunity to do so, and it makes no goddamn sense.)

Ugh.

If you made it this far -then what's _wrong_ with you?

Meanwhile.

In case any of you were curious, 'Josh,' Derek's Dumb Buddy, made a brief cameo in a Deleted Scene I posted in 'Relative Disparity' (the chapter entitled 'definition theatre'). It is herein Josh initially refers to Casey as a 'stone fox,' an allusion which Derek apparently misses here.

And!

Next chapter's already written; just need to proof and post it, which I should have done before the week is out.

Thank you so, so, _so, **so**_ much for your reviews. For real.

I mean. Wow. I love you guys.


	14. heart attack

HULLO!

D'you remember, aaaaaaaall the way back in Chapter Four, when I promised I'd force Derek to do something nice(-ish) for Casey to repay her (begrudging) kindness?

Well.

At long last, I have delivered.

Before we begin: in case anyone's forgotten (which I realize is a possibility for those of you have productive lives and _haven't _watched the entire series some eight-thousand times), Casey's father's name is Dennis. Yes-hm.

Also. We are back to the 'oneshot' flavor of the fic. This chapter, while definitely meant to be taking place at some point _after_ the events of the past few installments, stands alone. Casey and Derek have had time to fall back into their Old Routine by now, if not with marginal adjustments and perhaps a less...fraught vibe attached to their interactions.

[after dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, i have fought my way here to the studio beyond the Canadian city, to take back the rights to lwd daphne has STOLEN!]

* * *

_::in which, at long last, The Switch is thrown::_

Sure it's almost two in the morning. But it's Smarti's ringtone (for the special cell he'd given her before he'd gone off to college –one for her _exclusive_, _private_ use; he'd made her Special Smarti-Smerek Swear that she wouldn't tell anyone about it, even if Edwin tried to bribe her), so he doesn't even grumble about rolling over to grab his phone, and by the time it's on its third ring he's flipping it open.

"Smarti?" He says, somewhat groggily, fighting sleep. "What's up, baby sister?"

But it's not Marti on the other end of the line.

"Derek," his father says, instead.

"Ah, I knew she'd break and tell you 'bout the phone eventually. I swear, it's all that do-gooder McDonald influence—"

"Derek, Marti volunteered the phone because it's an emergency and we had no other way of making sure you'd answer—"

"Emergency? What happened?" His heart is suddenly thudding painfully in his chest, but he is _not_ Casey McDonald, and does not allow himself to jump to conclusions before the facts are made apparent.

"It's Dennis. He's-he's had a heart attack." Derek feels a wash of relief that all the members of _his_ family are fine, which is immediately followed by crushing guilt (he doesn't like how familiar that emotion is becoming to him these days). And then there is something…_else_, something that accompanies the rogue image in his brain of Casey, something that twists unpleasantly and manages somehow to be very nearly painful, but he does not pause to identify it. "He's in the hospital now and he seems to be stable, but—"

"Does Casey know?" Derek's fingers are fisted in his bed sheets.

"Ye-yes, Nora called her a little while ago; that's actually why we wanted to get in touch with you. Nora thinks she probably shouldn't be alone, and Derek…Derek, you should really be there for your step-sister right now. Please don't make me ask you twice." Derek breathes out very carefully, thinks about arguing or holding out for a bribe or protesting that he's not up for handling the Drama Queen at this unholy hour in the morning, when there's likely to be both unabashed insanity _and_ tears.

But maybe the McDonald do-gooder influence has gotten to him, too, because all he says is,

"Yeah, I'm on it."

Then he's throwing on his leather jacket and grabbing his keys, and he's out the door.

***

"Case, _what_ are ya' doin'?"

"What does it _look_ like I'm doing? I'm preparing a five-course meal. And laundering." She whips around and wields a spoon at him, and she's probably going to mistake his surprise for terror. "_Clothing_, before you try to make some stupid comment about me being a criminal." She's spinning back to her cooking project before he has time to be displeased that the remark hadn't even occurred to him. "And I'm working on a research paper for a friend."

"You're doing someone else's research paper? If I'd known you were volunteering your services—"

"You'd have insinuated that you wanted me to _write_ yours and I would've laughed in your face before I refused, and anyway, I'm not doing it 'for her,' I'm just helping her to compile and efficiently organize all the data. It's not like I'm busy, anyway—"

"Except for the whole cooking for the entire campus thing you seem to be doing. At three in the morning. Oh, and the money laundering…"

"I _knew_ you were going to make that joke! Ugggh!" She stamps her foot petulantly and it takes _all of him_ not to laugh or make a jibe.

"I'm becoming predictable, then. I'll work on my material, I promise. Just for you, princess." Okay, so he makes a little jibe. He can't _help_ himself. He's _weak_. "Don't you think you're…doing a bit much at the moment? I'm no scientist—"

"_That's_ for sure."

"—but I'm pretty sure if you don't pencil in some _breathing_ time at some point, I'm going to be stuck scraping you off the floor when you keel over, and I didn't bring my _good_ spatula with me—"

"What're you talking about, Derek?" She scoffs, waving him off and laughing derisively. "If anything, I'm not doing _enough_! I've got to get to work on that poetry assignment, for example, and I've got a proposal to write up for my Developmental Psychology class, and oh! I haven't even _started_ organizing my wardrobe by season, color, occasion…" It's a strange, unreal sort of moment for him, standing here watching her tap into Previously Unexplored Insanity with all the bubbling enthusiasm of a girl scout on speed, gleefully peddling her sugary poisons. Before now, he'd convinced himself that he'd seen the entire spectrum of Casey Crazy, but the look she has in her eyes now is somewhere between Twitchy, Nervous Breakdown, and _DE-REK_!, and he takes an unconscious step back in case she defies all the natural laws of the universe and _explodes_.

"Case—"

"Ah! Doesn't that smell _delicious_? Tofu-Broccoli Stir Fry! My _favorite_." Evidence of her derangement, he concludes.

"Casey," he says, and moves into her space. His eyebrows—do not—furrow when she deftly twirls out of his reach, now armed with a whisk and a plastic yellow bowl, because it's never cause for disappointment when she doesn't want to be anywhere near him. The only reason he constantly violates the Proximity Rule is because it bothers _her_. (Obviously.) "What's gonna happen when you run out of things to do?" He wonders idly, and dips his finger into some chocolatey-looking goop on the counter because her back is turned, though she has clearly planned for such contingencies by booby-trapping all of the food, as he's fairly certain he now has third-degree burns from said _scalding_ goop; choking back a blood-curdling scream, he promptly pops the finger into his mouth as she turns to face him, nursing it with affected nonchalance. When the silence begins to wear on him, he finally looks at her: she's perfectly still, mid-whisk, her eyes focused beyond him on something that (if he turns around to look) is probably just the wall. "Case—" He starts, and then she snaps (physically) out of her stupor and smiles (it's the most unnatural expression he's ever seen anyone wear) at him, and he shuts up.

"I'll just invite _you_ over, and you can do that mayhem thing you do so well, and I'll be here to clean up the mess!" She starts whisking furiously and the huge fake smile settles in for a long stay. "Until then, you can just…leave. Occupy yourself for a couple of days and then just pop by unexpectedly like you always do and Derek-it-up!" Three steps is all it takes to close the distance between them. She flinches when she realizes how close he is, and he's about to steal the whisk away from her so she'll be forced to listen to reason (if such a thing is even possible for a lunatic) for a moment when she apparently remembers suddenly that she needs something from the fridge and immediately steps (practically _runs_, actually) toward it, whisking frantically all the while.

And damn it, he's no _good_ at this. He doesn't know what to do with her anymore than he knows what to do with himself here, because he only has one way of dealing with Casey (admittedly with some relatively recent modifications), and this is _not it_. This is Derek Venturi in Uncharted Territory, and the natives are _teeming_ with mental unbalance. How do you communicate with someone when you suddenly discover that you don't speak their language? What do you do when the tried-and-true methods for dealing with the discrepancies break down? When they don't even _apply_?

He doesn't like responsibility, he _hates_ the _Real _stuff, and he is Very Uneasy about fucking around with the Casey-and-Derek dynamic as it is (and always has been); it works for them –it's _always_ worked for them, and he has a Peculiar Foreboding Feeling that if he _changes_ it…nothing will ever be the same again.

Still, it doesn't currently appear that he's got much choice in the matter, so he trails along right after her, feeling somewhat agitated when she dodges past him (_again_), this time flitting to the other side of the room without even bothering to come up with a thin pretense for escaping.

It takes him all of half an instant before he resumes the pursuit, and he doesn't even realize that he's already making a movement to bridge the gap between them and make some sort of casual contact until,

"Don't _touch_ me!" She snarls, and if he were anyone other than himself, he'd have taken a step back, given her the space she keeps _demanding_, bowed to her wishes (because everyone seems to eventually, but not _him_, _never him_), but he is Derek and he has to _push_ her because she's Casey and that's what he _does_.

So he doesn't even hesitate to take a step toward her, staring her down as she retreats and he follows.

"Stay _back_!" That long, soft-looking hair is all shaking loose from its colorful-scrunchy-binding, and she looks wild, desperate, _defeated_. He takes another step and all he has to do is reach out and touch her. "Please…please leave me alone." She sounds so small, so meek, so _utterly_ unlike Casey that it's really not that difficult, after all, to pull up his hand and stretch it toward her—

She runs. The bowl and the whisk clatter noisily to the floor and her hair slaps at his fingers as she spins and dashes away from him, and he doesn't even think (he's a hockey player; he's used to abrupt and unexpected changes of direction), he's just running after her, stubbing his toe (_damn it_) on the tiny dinner table wedged in between the kitchen and the living room, hurdling over the sofa, and then she's right in front of him and she's trying to twist away again but he's _not going to let her_ and before he knows it, he's standing right behind her, and she's frozen and breathing heavily and clenching her fists because his hands are the sudden, firm pressure at her hips.

And then he knows _why_ she didn't want him to touch her, because the second he does she crumples bonelessly to the floor, and he lets himself fall with her because she's crying, _sobbing_, and her entire frame is shaking as she curls around herself and he, in turn, curls around her, arms wrapping around her abdomen, forehead resting lightly against the space between her shoulder blades, and it's all terribly uncomfortable (in so very many more ways than one) but he doesn't say a word.

"Derek." She says, and his arms tighten around her unconsciously. "Derek." Between the sobs, hoarsely. "_Derek_." Then they're fighting again, except it's completely different because this time she's just trying to turn herself, and it's only a tussle because neither of them know how to coordinate this sort of event, so there are limbs everywhere and hair in his face and a knee wedged somewhat painfully into his kidney, but it's over just as quickly as it started when her arms wind tightly around him and she starts crying into his neck. "Derek." She hiccups, and he doesn't shudder even a little at the feel of her lips forming the name against his skin (but the effort this takes is very nearly Herculean).

"Spacey," he responds, and wishes there were some way to ward off the things that make her hurt (because he _hates_ tears –and that's the _only reason_). His hand glides evenly down her spine, his fingers fanning gently at its base before he sweeps them back up (is he breathing too heavily?). "He's okay. Everything's gonna be okay." He presses an absent kiss to her crown and is horrified at the lack of horror this action inspires. Then, he pulls her back, framing her face in his hands (he notices, not for the first time, how unreasonably _blue_ her eyes are), meeting her watery gaze. "What happened to all that obnoxious optimism, huh?" She looks at him like he has all the answers she could ever want, and it evokes within him a strange sense of…power. He licks his lips at the insight and then has to deal with the oddly tight feeling in his stomach when her gaze falls to his mouth. "Hey," he rasps, and she fixes him with a guilty look that pleases him in a sadistic, inappropriate sort of way, "your old man's going to be fine—"

"But what if he's _not_?" She interjects, and another few tears spill over and slip silently down her face. Derek rolls his eyes and uses both palms to blot at her cheeks, grinning at her when she manages a weak glare.

"You are aware that he's a _McDonald_, aren't you? Your breed doesn't go down easily. _I_ should know."

Somehow, impossibly, it's the right thing to say, because suddenly she's laughing, and this is not a smile he knows (personally) very well. She's worn it for Other Boys, of course, but never for him, and he finds himself unwittingly captivated by it. Because it isn't just her face that lights up; somehow, the entirety of the known universe is brighter (even though that's impossible and, more importantly, stupid).

"You really are the _most annoying_ brother ever, Derek." She says, and smacks his shoulder playfully.

"_Step_-brother." He corrects, and then it's a year ago and they're standing in the kitchen and if Casey follows the script, they'll be right back at Square One. The thought makes him irrationally angry, and he clings like a lifeline to that emotion when she continues to stare at him, just in case.

In his mind, he hears her say, _"Same difference_,_"_ with a warm smile and a coy fluttering of lashes.

"It really _would_ be a tragedy if there were any shared blood between us." She reflects instead, and leans into him, threading her arms through his to cross loosely at his back.

His heart begins to pound in his chest and he wonders if she can feel it thudding out of control where she's pressed against him (which is _everywhere_), because that line isn't in the script; she's ad-libbing, breaking character, violating touching parameters –just who gave this girl permission to start arbitrarily tweaking relationship dynamics, anyway?

"This is one of those rare moments where you're actually right about something, Case." He chuckles carefully, so as not to accidentally smother in vanilla fragrance. "Treasure it while it lasts." She wedges her head up underneath his chin and nudges him softly.

"Jerk." She exhales shakily, and gradually her breathing evens out. "Derek…" She says, at some length, and he stops playing with her hair (because he has only just realized he was doing it at all).

"Casey."

"I'm glad you're here." And, oh, this, this is just _excellent_. His step-sister's father is in the hospital recovering from a potentially life-threatening event, and he chooses _this_ moment to grasp the Horrifying Truth.

Derek wishes he could smash his head against the wall until he'd managed knock himself free of it.

He wants –more simply and seriously than he has ever wanted _anything _in his whole life—to kiss her.

(It just fucking _figures_.)

* * *

I wrote this a very long while ago; shortly after PB & Casey, as a matter of fact. You guys have *no idea* how difficult it was for me to keep from posting this for such an extended period. I feel so HAPPY to finally be able to do so.

Meanwhile.

I have one more chapter planned (porn-a-licious, but of course), and there's the possibility of an Epilogue after that, but we have essentially arrived at the end of this fic.

Which is f*cking crazy.

Thanks to all yous guys for bearing with me, and for reading this mad drivel.

(And to whatever anonymous reviewer left that Epic Review for Ch. 13 --thanks much! It gave me some much-needed food for thought for future adjustments I'm planning to make to that chapter, and I always appreciate the constructive criticism. ^_^)


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